Customer is mistakenly accused of text spamming for repeatedly replying STOP to political texts
Image credit — Lindsey LaMont on Unsplash
A Visible customer was recently the victim of what seems to be a misunderstanding of the company's automated spam detection system. According to the user, after working with customer service to reactivate an account, the response from the company alleged that the deactivation was due to the account being flagged for excessive text messaging — or spam, as that is against the company's terms and conditions.
However, there is one problem: the user states this wasn't spam, but rather they were responding "STOP" to a barrage of unsolicited political messages. This situation has highlighted a potential conflict between automated spam detection systems and legitimate user responses, especially in the context of increasing political text messaging.
The user, who posted their experience on Reddit, found themselves temporarily unable to send text messages due to the system's interpretation of their repeated "STOP" replies as spam activity. Not only that, but also lost $20 USD that the user had to pay in order to reactivate the line.
Email response the Visible customer received advising that this was a warning to not spam . | Image credit — r/alabamatide889 on Reddit
Anyone living in the United States around the time of the past U.S. Presidential election can attest to the sheer amount of political text messages that were being sent on a daily basis. This situation created a new set of challenges for both consumers and service providers. Campaigns and political organizations increasingly relied on text messages to reach potential voters, leading to a significant increase in the volume of these messages.
However, for individuals seeking to opt out of these communications, there are usually these choices:
1. Ignore the texts altogether, knowing they'd just go away once the election was over.
2. Mark as spam and delete.
3. Reply with "STOP" as the text messages themselves often tell you to do.
Unfortunately for this customer, choosing option 3 created a problem, as in this case it looks like Visible's automated systems that monitor text messaging activity for spam may have misinterpreted these series of replies as indicative of malicious behavior — resulting in a temporary service disruption. Other Visible customers that were active in this thread offered advice to the affected customer, suggesting to never reply to spam texts, as this usually just confirms to the spammer that this number is being used by an actual human, making the behavior even worse.
It should be noted that upon this customer sharing their experience on Reddit, a Visible employee did respond trying to try to reach out. The fact that a representative from Visible has been attempting to contact the user to address the issue indicates that the company recognizes the potential problem, and this response suggests that service providers are becoming more aware of the need to balance spam prevention with user experience. It's likely that companies will need to adapt their detection methods to accommodate the growing use of automated opt-out messages, particularly in the context of political campaigns.
Hopefully, the affected customer was able to get in touch with support to get this cleared up. As political campaigns continue to leverage text messaging, it's possible that more people could encounter similar issues in the future, and it is important to know that simple actions, like trying to stop texts, can be misread by automated systems. However, This is something that should definitely be fixed by carriers before the next primaries roll around. Spam won't be going away anytime soon, but the way we as customers and phone companies as the service providers handle it could make all the difference.
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