I seem to be getting plagued with junk text messages these days - the other day I had four. They all are of the form 'Congratulations a £1000 cash prize is urs.2 claim call 0906 xxx xxxx 150ppm Timewasters Ltd NW1 XXX'

Is there any way I can stop them? They really piss me off. I'm also concerned they might be reverse charged, but I won't know til I get my bill. I've heard of people getting sent 'joke' texts they hadn't even signed up for and getting charged a pound per waste of time. They had to go to the police to get them stopped.

I used to get:

"This is the 2nd time we have tried to contact you. You have won £1400. Call 09(whatever) b4 07/03/03. Stop SMS 07**** / t&cs. 140/ppm."

On Vodafone, in the end I changed my number. You couldn't stop it, they did say to stop it by call this number, but it was a £1 a minute.

Yes I keep getting exactly the same messages. I wonder if you phone up your network is it possible for them to bar texts from specific numbers

You could try registering at the Telephone Preference Service Web Site. It does have a checkbox for SMS messages. Don't know how much effect it will have as the cowboy operators that send this stuff probably ignore it anyway but it only takes a couple of minutes to register.

Well, you can ring up icstis who regulate premium rate messaging and phone calls. If you give them a call (it's free) they'll take it up with the provider if they've broken their code of conduct (no call cost or contact etc.) or give you a landline contact number for them to ask to be removed from their database.

You can even file a complaint online, I do it all the time as there's nothing more annoying than the things.

http://www.icstis.org.uk/

Liam

I don't understand where my numbers come from!

I think it's probably just a case of sending them in batches to groups of numbers which they know have been allocated a few months earlier - chances are most people's will still be active.

I've heard of some companies ringing people up offering people an upgrade and kinda pretending they're from the person's network, judging only by the number prefix - when the person's actually already ported out of the network!

Liam