iPhone Blocking spam iMessages?

[PhillyGuy72]

Not sure what's happening all of a sudden, I've been receiving a load of junk spam text messages that started hitting my phone over the weekend (some 202 area code, keeps calling me "David" - which is not my name!), So far 3 today..another one from GOP, and the Primary election in PA...smh!!

I thought iPhone kicks these to "Unknown senders??" I have that "Filter" setting on in settings. (I'd turn MMS off, but I have friends that use Android...ah well)
I end up blocking those callers. I'm still running iOS 13.3.1

Few more junk spam/junk phonecalls also today, those are always "silenced." So annoying!

 

[bransoj]

MMS only needs to be on if you send pictures to Android phones....

 

[Rider3]

Had the same problem from 202 area code. After some checking I found they were using a computer to send them and not a phone. I assume that's why the number cound't be blocked since they were sending them by email.
After unchecking my email address under iMessage settings I haven't received any more.

 

[PhillyGuy72]

Had the same problem from 202 area code. After some checking I found they were using a computer to send them and not a phone. I assume that's why the number cound't be blocked since they were sending them by email.
After unchecking my email address under iMessage settings I haven't received any more.

Ah! Ok that makes complete sense and totally forgot about that, I unchecked my email also...hopefully that works. I did have an issue months ago where my email was connected to my Google / Apple calendar, some spam text actually automatically added this week long event right into my phones and iMac calendar. Once I unlinked that, no more issues....ugh, disgusting.

Thanks so much!

 

[C DM]

It would be really nice if Filter Unknown Senders for iMessages applied to regular SMS/MMS as well, but unfortunately it doesn't. The new, in iOS 13, option to Silence Unknown Callers is also something good to have, but doesn't seem to apply to messages.

So, it seems that there are options to deal with unknown calls and iMessages, but it doesn't seem like there's much for regular texts (SMS/MMS) -- has anyone found something reasonable that might work for those?