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Killing Unwanted Text Messages from Yahoo! Alerts?
Creighti asks: "When I first got my new cellphone I immediately received several automated Text Message 'Alerts' from Yahoo and MSN which recurred on a daily basis. My guess was (is) that the previous owner of my cell phone number signed up for these things. Six months later I'm still getting unwanted text messages from Yahoo! Alerts.
I managed to get rid of the MSN messages by signing up with MSN (gack), registering the phone number as mine, and de-selecting all text messages. I've tried the same trick with Yahoo. I've tried filling out the Yahoo! Help form that appeared to apply (interestingly enough, the Yahoo Help entry I've used several times to request they stop sending the unwanted alert appears to have been removed, but clicking the 'No' button on this page would work). I've even tried emailing abuse@yahoo.com. Anyone else getting text-message spammed by Yahoo! (or any other service)? Any suggestions for what I should do next to try and get Yahoo! to stop sending these unwanted messages?" Why aren't the text message preferences deleted when the cancellation notices comes thru?
I suggest that instead of continuing to try to get Yahoo to stop sending the messages you instead contact your telephone company and ask them to block the messages before they get to your phone.
As they are making money off you and Yahoo isn't, you are more likely to get a useful response.
I didn't think of that...I feel sorry for the owners of my last 3 cellphone numbers.
Because these alerts are like a mailing list subscription and the phone number is like an email address. The problem is phone numbers are reused, where email addresses, generally, are not.
Yahoo or MSN do not receive notification when someone cancels their phone account.
Yahoo! Mobile Devices, log in under your Yahoo account and select "Add a New Device", then add your phone number, or e-mail for the cell phone, depending on what your operator supports and then specifically do not choose any alerts.
Just a guess, but probably what is registered is an e-mail address like 3215551212@sprintpcs.com which is how e-mail can find its way to SprintPCS phones. The service you sign up for may have no relation to your cell provider, so cancelling one doesn't cancel the other and then your phone number (and hence e-mail address) can be recycled.
I'm sure Yahoo! would happily ignore your bill. If you were lucky it *might* get posted on the bulletin board, next to the cafeteria menu for the week, as humor.
Unless the cellphone number has been given out to a lot of people, I would just change it. It's the path of least resistance...
-This sig intentionally left blank
Ok, not about cell phone text, but about getting Yahoo to stop things...
I have an *ancient* Geocities home page, that was set up before Yahoo acquired them. I am "yoderm" on Yahoo and was on Geocities before the acquisition. Unfortunately, the GC home page is not associated with my Yahoo account. I now have no way of logging into the thing, and really want it deleted.
I've sent two messages through their "help" center, but no response. I've tried every support@ and help@ type e-mail I could think of for yahoo.com, geocities.com, and yahoo-inc.com. They all either bounce or get an automated reply that says "go to the help center".
Conclusion: Yahoo goes WAY out of their way to avoid dealing with human "customers".
Go through your local fast food drive-thru, order a coffee and make sure you spill it on yourself as you are reading your messages. I'm pretty sure the warning labels on the coffee do not yet include: Warning! Do not drink while reading text messages.
...how easy is it to dick with people you don't like by registering their cell phone number with dozens of text alert sites? If these messages don't include a way to unsubscribe, they probably aren't confirmed opt-in either.
I have a cellphone with Verizon (and an associated vtext account for messages.) I tried signing up for weather alerts on my cellphone but found out quickly that the messages sent were too long to be useful.
I was able to unsubscribe from the alerts - but even after I unsubscribed from the alerts, I kept receiving advertisements from the service sent to my cellphone.
After a couple of unsucessful attempts to get it stopped I finally poked around on the Vtext site and found out that I was able to block a specified domain from sending to my cellphone.
Blocking the domain of the weather alerts provider killed the spam as well.
See if your provider doesn't let you filter out @yahoo.com messages.
In illa quae ultra sunt
"honest honey, all the porno text ads are from the previous owner of the cell phone."
"Then explain why you paid $400 for a phone with a color screen."
And he's not a dumbass, either. He's found his choices are (1) put up with the messages, (2) change phone numbers, or (3) disable text messaging (carrier phenomenon). 1 and 3 are free, 2 costs money (albeit not much).
Why (4) get Yahoo! to! stop! it! please! isn't an option boils down to "they don't listen". It's one of those scary companies where there's no apparent way to actually *contact* anyone who can do something about this. There's no there, there so to speak.
He has said that the wireless carrier was particularly unhelpful, which doesn't surprise me. I had a problem for a while when I got my first cellular with getting FAX calls. They offered to *sell* me caller ID (an expensive option on a limited range of AMPS equipment), but wouldn't do anything about tracking down who it was.
I'm frankly surprised that there isn't more phone spam (how hard is it to figure out that all of a carrier's cell numbers are in NXX-5xx-xxxx?) or that message services don't build in a failsafe way to stop them, like adding a user-specfic hash code to every message and then have a web page where you can go, enter that hash, and disable that phone number's messaging.
I had a similar problem with an on-line brokerage; I gave them my pager address so they could send trade confirmations, and ONLY trade confirmations. A few months later, I started getting pager spams at 2am, 3am, etc. from them. I called their customer service people, told them to stop, and they promised it would.
When it started up a month or so later, I sent a registered letter to the CEO, calmly explaining that the first time is a mistake, the second time is harassment. I also filed complaints with the FCC, the NASD, the US attorney general, and their own attorney general.
I got a polite, written response from a representative of the company explaining why the error occured, and also outlining the steps they were taking to make sure that it could not occur again.
So... Be calm, be forgiving, and be factual. And then scream bloody murder.
Trust me. You won't be on that list for long. If you are, take a trip to your friendly neighborhood court and file for a small claims case. Then you're talking settlement.
My
Limekiller
I had an old geocities account that didn't get converted to my yahoo account, and after months of unsuccessful attempts to get the darn thing cancelled, I wrote a letter to the Yahoo person in charge of copyright violations, and explained that Yahoo was violating my copyright to the works posted on that old geocities account. Effectively, by limiting my ability to control the distribution of my copyrighted works, they were violating my copyrights. Not that I wanted to sue or anything, I just wanted those pages gone.
Not long after, that account disappeared, and I was happy.
Does anyone have Alan Rasky's cell phone number?
I have a couple really good deals on Viagra and Penis Enlargement to pass on.
paintball
I'm sure Yahoo! would happily ignore your bill
IANAL. Check with a lawyer, but you'll probably find the following to be correct.
Legally, they CAN'T ignore such a bill that you choose to send them.
Under US law, it is ILLEGAL for Yahoo! to send unsolicited advertising messages to a mobile device, such as a pager and the like. You can bill them up to $500 for EACH MESSAGE. So if he sends them a bill, legally they MUST PAY.
Send them a message via certified snail mail, return receipt requested, explaining that the owner of the phone number has changed, and demanding immediate removal of your phone's details from the database. Tell them that failure to comply by a certain date will result in them paying penalties of up to $500 per message sent to your mobile device.
And if the messages don't stop, send them a bill for $350 for each message, with a warning that failure to pay by a certain will result in court action being taken against Yahoo! and $500 being payable for each message.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
/me pulls up his super-secret list of contact numbers
Ah, here we go. Give Yahoo a call at 1-408-349-3300. Took me a while to find that number, but it actually works.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
I used to get a lot of important e-mail from the folks at Microsoft telling me about their wonderful products. After making several unsuccessful attempts to get off their mailing list, I finally changed my profile and set my e-mail address to postmaster@microsoft.com. Worked like a charm.
---insert signature line here---
To add to the previous respondents that also said you're wrong, I can give an example of what happens in small claims. My brother went through this and it took him a year to collect his money.
An established nursery business with several locations in a particular city in Oklahoma let one of their unlicensed, illegal immigrant workers drive one of their spare cars. This guy came barreling down the road, over the hill, and realized he was going too fast to avoid hitting the car that had stopped at the light in front of him. He swerved into oncoming traffic and nailed my brother head on as he was waiting in the oncoming turn lane. Police came, arrested illegal immigrant for no license and no insurance. My brothers car needed major work, and he only had liability as he had just paid it off a month before.
Nursery came and bailed the guy out of jail. The nursery claimed they had sold the car to the guy, and "We're not responsible." My brother went to the DMV and had to pay to get the ownership records himself, as proof that they were the registered owners. He had to pay to file the claim in small claims court. He had to pay to have them served with a summons. They didn't show up to court, so he won. He sent them several letters, never got an acknowledgement or a dime from them.
He went back to court a few months later with delivery receipts of the letters he had sent. He had to buy something from the nursery with a check so that he could figure out where their bank account was and what the number was. Once he had this information, he ask the court for a garnishment. It was granted, he went to the bank, and got about half of what he was owed because they didn't have enough in the account to cover the full amount. Another round of registered letters, another trip back to court, another garnishment, and he finally got to their bank account at a time when they had enough money to cover what he was owed and all the additional costs he had accrued trying to collect the money.
This is the same wherever you go, and it even will work in your favor if you get sued. Just don't pay, and it can take months or years for them to get the money out of you, if they ever get it. Now, there is of course no guarentee you won't eventually piss some judge off and have a warrant issued for you.
I routinely handle complaints on behalf of my customers with their vendors. Some vendors, such as Verio, are beyond awful to work with based on my experience. Some vendors know me by name if enough of my clients have issues with them :-). I will outline my techniques for the common benefit of the readers.
My typical procedure (first week):
1. Contact first level personnel for about 3 days and gather employee IDs and case numbers.
2. Cease talking with first level and skip directly to first level supervisors confronting them with evidence. Do so for 1 day, on the 3rd day with at least 2 calls documenting the supervisor employee ID and case numbers.
3. Cease talking with supervisors and skip directly to second level supervisors. Do so for 1 day similar to 1st level.
4. Advise the second level supervisor that if the problem is not handled within the next 24 hours (the 5th day), the next directive will be received from his manager, ignore the laughter if any insues.
5. Follow up the next day (by then you should have a direct line) and remind him that the problem still exists.
Begin corporate level follow ups as follows (second week, generally 2 to 3 days):
1. Look up the company's corporate records for the following:
a) The front desk phone number
b) The Investor Relations (or any other PR function) - optional, never used it
c) The legal counsel of the company - optional, never used it
d) The company's mailing address for the HQ
2. Contact the front desk and ask to be transferred to the Office of the President/CEO. It's really none of their business to know why, but be candid and polite.
3. Believe it or not, most of the time you will in fact reach the executive assistant or someone whose job is specifically to resolve stretched out problems. Once you reach that person, obtain their direct number, e-mail, fax, and mailing address. Be prepared to send a ton of evidence of wrongdoing. The people at the top generally will have the organization chart available and know the executive in charge of that particular part of the company.
4. If you are lucky, and most of the time you won't be, you'll be given contact information for that particular executive. The executives are extremely busy people, so you'll likely talk to his assistant instead. Most of the time, however, it's not really necessary.
5. Be prepared for very different treatment the next time you call the customer service department as your name will be quite well known around the company. A simple memo from about 4-5 management levels down advising on how to deal with your problem carries infinitely more weight than any insult you can come up with.
Yes, I get results fast and this kind of work generally costs the client about $1200 or so. In fact, I once got a Nortel Regional VP in charge of my area to contact me within literally 40 minutes of me reaching just the front desk at Nortel to resolve a vendor issue. The vendor subsequently lost their authorization from Nortel.
Does this sound like overkill? Try to call Yahoo front desk, ask for Office of CEO, and present your case. Internal pressure is very effective.
Oh yeah, the mailing address is for the thank you letter along with hard copies of the evidence.
Enjoy!
Leonid S. Knyshov
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