A spammer who perform his paid work for both shady lenders and political campaigns confirmed that replying to texts with “Remove” as instructed if one wishes not to receive such solicitations in the future has the opposite effect.
Kiryat Malachi, January 24 – The approach of national elections this April has many locals feeling excited that their phones will now receive spam messages of more than the single variety with which they have had to make do for most of the last four years.
Users of mobile phones voiced a mixture of anticipation and relief at the prospect of getting text messages other than shady offers for quick loans in the tens of thousands of shekels, even if the additional unwelcome messages involve political sloganeering, surveys, or unnecessary information.
“We got a taste of it in the municipal election campaigns a few months ago,” recalled one resident who declined to give her identity out of concern for showing up on more text message spam distribution lists. “It was such a change of pace, it was almost nice. The variety gave me, well, I wouldn’t call it hope, exactly, but perhaps less despair.”
Political campaign media coordinators expressed gratification that they have a hand in such a positive phenomenon. “We tend to think of our work as technical, even formulaic,” admitted a staffer for Kulanu Party MK Rachel Azaria, formerly a Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem. “So it’s satisfying every now and then to realize we’re contributing to a noticeable, happy development.”
Users reported only a trickle of non-loan text messages over the last week, but expect the frequency to increase as Election Day, Tuesday April 9, draws nearer. “I know it’s still too early for any reasonable hope that the incessant buzzing of my phone means a scummy political intrusion instead of a scummy banking intrusion,” remarked a Beit Shemesh teacher and father of three. “But after years and years of texts urging me to take out an immediate loan of up to 75,000 shekels, a guy can dream of getting messages that contain surveys with only certain parties listed so there’s no way they’ll result in an accurate picture of the electoral situation, you know?”
A spammer who perform his paid work for both shady lenders and political campaigns confirmed that replying to texts with “Remove” as instructed if one wishes not to receive such solicitations in the future has the opposite effect. “When someone answers we know that’s an active number so it gets even more messages,” he explained. “If people weren’t so gullible and manipulable there would be no point in political campaigns in the first place, let alone this stupid trick.”
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