How do you stop getting silly advertising messages from your cell phone service provider?

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My complain has proven too effective. I refused to withdraw the complain in my first interaction but then received two more calls one from the company's Director. another from the manager working for the third party outsourced company building the SMS app (via a college-mate). There has even been a spike in the views my linkedin profile gets - up from 2 in a month to 8 in day So I guess it depends on the company's sincerity on not being a spammer. If they don't they will take extra steps.

After this experience, I can only say that people try that app - it really works.

Your situation is a bit grey. You signed up for alerts but are complaining about the frequency.

Now i don't know whether asingh is in the same boat as you too. My assumption is he has not signed up for alerts yet he is still getting spam. Further, he says he has complained and nothing has changed.

i too agree with @haiprazzad's comments. registering on DnD and reporting spam to 1909 really work. tried it on old (14 years old) as well as relatively new (3 years old) number.

So what can be done for asingh ?

 

[haiprazzad]

After registering a complaint to your operator via 1909, they will lodge it to TRAI, provide us with a reference number and give you a target date to resolve. Its status can be checked here.

Apparently there are two categories. Fully blocked and Partially blocked. More details here.

There is a link in the same page to check his mobiles DND status.

Its not clear whether @asingh has raised complaints to 1909 with spammer details. If he had then he can check its status using above link.

Now the big question, what if you subscribe to spam(knowingly or unknowingly) after registering in DND?

I think you can still be saved. Basically what I believe happens after complaining to 1909 is, on first complaint, our network carrier will ask the spammer to remove our number from their distribution list. And on second complaint, spammers number will get disconnected.

 

[Criminal]

So what can be done for asingh ?

haiprazzad listed the procedure above.

following two are really important to pin-point the culprits:

Apparently there are two categories. Fully blocked and Partially blocked. More details here.

Now the big question, what if you subscribe to spam(knowingly or unknowingly) after registering in DND?

in olden days, it used to take 90 days for DND to work. i still used to get random calls and SMSs. to find out who was misusing my number, i bought a new number and used it for a while. to avoid getting a recycled number, i made sure that i got the number from a totally new series. i found out the culprits in my case to be Naukri.com and DogSpot.in.

i have registered for full block on DND site. the downside is that certain service providers (BSNL) de-list my number and i don't receive 'necessary' alerts. i have to list my number again on such sites every 90 days.

spammers get reported to 1909. i receive two kinds replies: the call/message wasn't found in their (service provider's) database or the number is deactivated for repeated violations. now i rarely get spam... it's reduced to 10 times in a year.

 

[sharktale1212]

Your situation is a bit grey. You signed up for alerts but are complaining about the frequency.

No I dint signup for the alerts from One Assist. They were sending me messages irrespective and their Director had a call with me yesterday to ask for complaint withdrawal. People from the company kept googling me up whole day yesterday.

 

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i have registered for full block on DND site. the downside is that certain service providers (BSNL) de-list my number and i don't receive 'necessary' alerts. i have to list my number again on such sites every 90 days.

yes, the downside of full block is there is no way to whitelist the ones you want

so that must be asingh's problem then. cant miss some alerts so have to put with the nuisance.

 

[asingh]

Is the Dnd portal also supposed to curb voice solicitation. "Buy an insurance policy".

 

[haiprazzad]

^^ Yes. Actually you choose what you want to block. Here is how you can do in Airtel

Fully blocked SMS “Start 0” to 1909
Preference-based (allow SMS for selected preference category) SMS “Start <preference category>” to 1909
Preference Category : 1 for Banking/Insurance/Financial products/credit cards, 2 for Real estate, 3 for Education, 4 for Health, 5 for Consumer goods and Automobiles, 6 for airtel Communication/Broadcasting/Entertainment/IT, 7 for Tourism and Leisure

If you subscribe to anything after blocking then you do get messages/calls from them.
Ex:. after registering in DND, I subscribed to Metro and now am getting their promotional messages. (am regretting the choice, but they send 2 msgs in a month, so can live with it)