PSA - use a free carrier lookup website to see where your spam calls and texts come from. Mine mostly come from Bandwidth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_Inc.), Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB), and other such platforms with APIs. It appears these companies have very poor anti abuse practices. When I contacted them for help they basically refused to reveal how my number was obtained, what their practices were in establishing consent, and did no more than block one specific number each time from contacting me. Sometimes they claimed they’re just a wholesale reseller and have no obligations to take more action. They didn’t even respond to my repeated request to preserve data and communications relating to these repeated abuse cases. These companies should be shut down and their executives should be personally fined.
Don't most spam calls/texts these days use fake caller/sender IDs anyway?
> It appears these companies have very poor anti abuse practices. When I contacted them for help they basically refused to reveal how my number was obtained
How would a service provider know how your customer obtained your number?
But you reporting that you're receiving unwanted calls/texts from one of their customers should of course still trigger some action on their side – if indeed that's the number that contacted you, per the above.
It does exist but you have to take the 5 minutes to fill out a form. You can find it at https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov and click “Phone issues”. I also suggest simultaneously reporting to the FTC via https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ and click “Report now”.
You can also forward spam text messages to 7726 in the US (goes to your cell phone carrier), which is very effective because the carriers have low tolerance for these issues and also train their own anti spam off this data.
I do submit a complaint for each instance. I’ve sent over a thousand now. Hopefully it’s useful data to someone.
My intent isn’t to reverse-spam the FCC though; the complaint form just only accepts one phone number at a time. Amusingly I’ve discovered that it’s possible to receive a higher volume of spam than the FCC’s rate limits allow reporting.
By looking up the carrier you can then find the right company to complain to via their reporting process, if they have one. And additionally you can file a report to the FTC and FCC that mentions them.
EDIT: The idea is that you complain to the company whose platform is sending you spam, the regulatory agencies at https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/ and https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/, your own cell phone carrier by forwarding text spam to 7726, and that will result in actions that hopefully will address that one situation but also collectively reduce spam for everyone. Without identifying which platform sent you the spam, you cannot know which company to go complain to (they usually have a reporting tool on their website). And you can name them in your complaints to the FCC and FTC.
I’m assuming that you search for the originating phone number of spam callers? It was unclear to me from context how this would help in the manner you suggested, for blocking or reducing spam calls.
