I live in the US and we've got elections coming up. Every day for the past several months, I get 3-8 text messages from political campaigns per day. I block them every time, yet they keep coming in.

My question is NOT how to stop them, but what happens to those numbers that I, and surely hundreds and maybe thousands of other people have blocked? What if an actual person gets that phone number and needs to call people? What happens then?

Because on a long enough time line, all numbers will have been used for spam.

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[–] 5 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Exactly what you think, they are blocked if they call you. The block list is saved locally on your device, no matter who acquires the number.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    Don't Android and iOS put blocked numbers into your account so those numbers are still blocked on a new phone when you log into it?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

    Na, iPhone stores them in Settings > Apps > Phone > Blocked contacts, android is similar. That information doesn't go to the carrier, though it will transfer if you put your new phone next to it and migrate all the data

    (On android if you block someone, the texts still come to the phone, just in a folder that you have to go look for, like a filter basically)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    Still considered locally, you just sync it over the cloud. It would be an issue if those blcok lists get shared by everyone. I guess some android version like mine has a report for spam feature, so that could be a shared list.

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