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PatPiot's profile

Tutor

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2 Messages

Thursday, February 14th, 2019 11:14 PM

SMS Spam Coming From an Email Address: How to Report

I'm getting spam texts from email addresses. When I report those to SPAM,  there's a step to provide the phone number. When I send the email address, it again asks for a phone number. Any way around this? If not, an AT&T people know who runs this program so I can request that they allow email addresses as senders in addition to phone numbers?

 

Thank you.

Tutor

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2 Messages

5 years ago

Here’s how

It’s about stopping  messages from email address (spammers latest technique)
This should take care of this annoying issue. I just spent 35 minutes on the phone with a WONDERFUL AT&T Customer Care Rep named Gina. She & her supervisor researched and located "Article *446389". It gave her instructions how to block all emails being sent as text messages on my Phone. AT&T has to do it on their end. As she just did it for my account, I am hopeful that I will not receive more of those pesky texts. When you call AT&T, ask the representative to look up "Article *446389

He said -- and this will make sense on their end -- that they should click on "Torch", then to "Mind" then to E-Mail Getaway or Gateway (sorry think this is right - can't read my own writing.) There are three options they can turn off. The first two is to block email on SMS, the second is block email on MMS. He selected both. (There is a third option which he did not do because he had no idea what it was.)

New Member

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1 Message

Niceeee!!! Thank you so much.

It took me a hard time to get these messages blocked. They said they were unable to process the request because of a higher level of difficulty. They said they will open a ticket and then somebody from ATT will call me within 24h.

New Member

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2 Messages

@Knb1534 Thanks, I called ATT, and after wading through the language difficulties with the level 1 representative, and the slightly less painful language difficulties with the level 2 representative, keeping my patience along the way, I was able to get them to check the two boxes that you mention above that will prevent any low-life spammers from sending unwanted email messages from their fake email addresses to my iPhone as a text. Yes, Apple should have this built into IOS. They don't. Yes, ATT should be right up front and tell all about this. They won't. If you have the problem described here, and you have patience, just take the steps described by Knb1534 above, and you can then live in peace without spam emails showing up as texts on your phone.

(edited)

New Member

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2 Messages

Thanks for the info on how to stop these text messages that I've been getting from these emails. I can now call AT&T and get this stopped. Wished we would have had prior warning about this problem and a simpler solution.

New Member

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2 Messages

@Knb1534 Yup, this worked for me. I just called them myself. Awaiting to see if this has any effects. They changed it on their end: "Torch" ==> "Mind" then to "E-Mail Gateway".

Thank you!

New Member

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1 Message

@Knb1534 THANKS! Rarely do I find solutions on forums but this was it. The support tech thanked me for doing his job :)

Contributor

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1 Message

5 years ago

All well and good, but I shouldn't have to call up AT&T and have their reps stumble through documentation to find some obscure instructions on how to do it. And I shouldn't have to tell the reps where to find it in THEIR documentation.

 

I should be able to manage these settings on my device or through the website.

ACE - Master

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10.3K Messages

5 years ago

If you want to be able to block texts from emails on your device, you’ll have to talk to Apple to get them to write it into their iOS.  Otherwise, it’s depending on AT&T to do it.

Mentor

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30 Messages

5 years ago

I have no idea what you just said. It's not proper grammar. 

Mentor

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30 Messages

5 years ago

Definitely that didn't answer the question 

Tutor

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1 Message

5 years ago

I wish to block ALL texts sent to me from email addresses. As the spammers constantly change their address, it’s impossible to block them,  or more accurately, worthless to block individual addresses AFTER I’ve received them. It’s akin to closing the door after you’ve been punched in the face. I’d rather PREVENT than react. 

Contributor

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1 Message

5 years ago

I have tried to report spam texts from email addresses to "abuse@att.net" as indicated from the AT&T worker above and the reply I get back from AT&T is this long drawn out excuse that they cannot complete my request.  Per the response they state: "Please note that we can only take action on reports that implicate the AT&T network as a source of abuse.  As we are unable to take any action on reports not involving AT&T's network, we recommend that you send those reports directly to the abuse address of the originating domain or service provider." 

I appreciate that they tried to provide a solution, but it doesn't resolve the issue at all, and I don't have the time nor the drive to report all of these spam texts from emails back to their domain.  Similarly to the reporting of spam text to 7726, we should be able to forward a spam text from an email.  

 

Tutor

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5 Messages

5 years ago

I was in a chat with a rep and told them about Article *446389. They said they completed the steps but I'm STILL getting this stupid spam emails

Contributor

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1 Message

4 years ago

Well now I just got off of the phone with AT&T Customer Service Rep Eric. Glad I had this information. He didn't know about ARTICLE 446389 either. When I told him he asked where I got the information from. I told him and he "hopefully" fixed the issue. Time will tell whether or not these wretched TEXT messages STOP. If you call AT&T about unwanted TEXT messages from EMAIL ADDRESSES you will likely need to tell THEM to look at ARTICLE 446389.

Contributor

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2 Messages

4 years ago

Knb1534 Thank you very much for posting your findings. Pain in the butt that we have to call to get this issue resolved, but 10 minutes on the AT&T support line is worth not having another spam malicious link sent by some text message Gmail address. So anyone else with this issue seriously just call AT&T support and let them know about the Article *446389 as this is a new method used by spammers so the rep likely will not have heard of the issue, and they will take care of the rest!

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