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Bouncer (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bouncer-text-messages-blocker/... / https://github.com/afterxleep/Bouncer) is a free and open source SMS filtering app that has saved my sanity over the past couple of years. You need to manually set up filters, but once you do, the amount of political spam drops to 0.

It uses iOS’s SMS Filtering framework, which does the filtering in a privacy-preserving way: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_repor...




This modal pops up when you enable Bouncer on iOS 18:

"The developer of 'Bouncer' will receive the text, attachments, and sender information in SMS and MMS messages from senders not in your Contacts. Messages may include personal or sensitive information like bank verification codes."

This doesn't scream "privacy preserving".


Is there an equivalent for android?


there's a nice app with the same name, but it doesn't do the same thing. It auto-removes permissions from apps


> For privacy reasons, the system handles all communication with your associated server; your Message Filter app extension can’t access the network directly.

Thanks for the documentation link, I was uneasy about using this type of extension.


Are there any rules that folks find really effective? It doesn’t come with any out of the box.


It's 2024 and smart phones don't do out-of-the-box spam filtering?


They do, but it's important to realize here that there is, in fact, a small demographic who actually want to get that political spam. So messages like that are going to get through the automated spam filter.

I suppose they could bundle a more advanced rules-based system, but since there's an API for user apps to do it, why not leave the job up to them?


This is not free and cost $2.99




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