Recently, businesses that have my cell number have decided it’d be okay to text me.
I disagree. Texts are fine if you’re my friend, or co-worker, or know me in some legitimate way. However, I am in no way okay with receiving automated texts of any kind.
So far, the only actual recourse I’ve found is to insist that these businesses delete my cell number. It’s apparently now a given that, if they have that number, they’ll generate automated texts. There’s no opt-out, short of zapping the number, which is annoying — if they want to call me, that’s fine. I just don’t want the texts.
It turns out that there ARE ways to block some kinds of automated texts, but I’m not 100% sure this will work — the culprits for me are reservation or appointment systems, but it does seem possible that they’re using the same internet-gateway type approach.