How-to: keep text message spammers out of the Samsung Galaxy SIII

The Samsung Galaxy S3 is a great looking smartphone and comes with some of the latest technology for those who love taking their digital world with them. But since texting is the number one activity among those who use smartphones, it is smart to learn what can be done to keep those text message spammers out of this desirable handset.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has a great screen, but for those who are going to use that nice screen to send and receive texts, it needs to stay under control. The user should not have to suffer from those who want to make a few bucks by sending out thousands of unwanted spam texts to the world. What can be done? The first thing to do is to is to report those spammers. There is no real "mobile spam police" yet in the world, but cell companies do take charge over this. AT&T, Verizon and others have come up with an easy way to report spam texters on the Galaxy S3. It is a short code. The number is "7726". Send the spammy texts to that number and they will deal with it. Another thing your carrier can do is block the phone numbers that are known to send out spam attacks. Use them, they are there for your service.

The second thing you can do to keep spam texts out of your Samsung Galaxy S3 is to contact the FTC. Just like the land line days, you can input your mobile phone number into the FTC's "Do not call" registry. You can find it online at donotcall.gov. Visit the site, enter your mobile phone number and your S3 will become off limits within about a month of your visit. This is for calls, but it alerts the right people with the carriers.

Not many people know this but if a spam text arrives, the Samsung Galaxy S3 user can send the word "STOP" to the sender and it will prevent future messages from the same spammer. If getting a spam text can mean having malware installed on the S3, losing banking information, or initiating unwanted calls to premium 900 numbers, just sending the word "STOP" become attractive. If you are not yet aware of it, 900 calls are billed many times from two to four dollars a minute. Some are automatically a $50 dollar charge. Putting that together with the fact that calls can be rounded to off in six minutes increments you can see how an unscrupulous person can make a lot of money sending spam texts. Sending that "STOP" message starts to look attractive when the user realizes how easy it is to lose money from a spammer.

Lastly, there are apps to combat the spam that will no doubt arrive on the Samsung Galaxy S3. It is called "Call Control" but will work with the spam as well because it cuts off all communications from the sender. The Call Control app is preloaded with thousands of numbers of those dreaded telemarketers. It is automatically updated to be fresh on the smartphone, since automated calls are sometimes initiated by computers. It not only stops the spammers, but debt collectors as well, for those Galaxy S3 owners who have that problem. The total amount of numbers blocked is over 3.5 million and the total number of supporters is 2.5 million. The price is right for the Call Control app. It is a free download for the S3.

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