TMobile is censoring lemmy.world posts (and maybe others)
Just tried to send a friend a story about Parkinson's from lemmy.world and every single time TMobile strips the link from my SMS. They let tumblr.com though.
I just looked up if they're actively censoring other sites and, yes. They are. They claim they're only doing this to obscure domains (.xyz and so on) but I just watched a YouTuber demonstrate .com censorship too. So it seems it's less arbitrary than they claim.
https://community.t-mobile.com/accounts-services-4/why-is-t-mobile-censoring-our-sms-40519
https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/rskfmx/video_evidence_of_tmobiles_sms_blocking_the_more/
The conservatives are crying about it like it's just them getting censored but it seems it's beyond party lines if I can't share an article about Parkinson's research.
Oh wow, that’s totally not a gross invasion of privacy.
Welcome to SMS.
Don’t get me wrong; I understand SMS is a very insecure method of communication.
That doesn’t justify cellular companies censoring the communications of their users. That’s just not justifiable; like I said before that’s a gross abuse of privacy and free speech.
I obviously am a tech guy (I’m on Lemmy, lol) but not everyone is, and it’s wrong to act like people that don’t understand the technical workings of their communication apps don’t deserve privacy and security and autonomy. Should they be educated about these things? Oh hell yeah! But to say we shouldn’t protect people because of their ignorance…that’s just not helpful to your fellow man. Nor can I think of any moral justification.
Were I a tmobile subscriber, I'd look to start a class action suit. I'm not, however. Hint hint tmobile subscribers. This sounds like a pretty clear case.
This seems and sounds very bad but I would bet this is more of a result of filtering or anti spam protocols than active censoring. Could be several different companies or ISPs or datacenters it goes through since SMS is such an old and inefficient service. Best idea would be to switch to different messaging app that isn't whatsapps or use RCS
If true, it actually makes some sense. An older generation with poor eyesight seems likely to fall for legit-looking scam texts with links to copycat domains like "arnazon" and "UPS.gov.co".
This would be pretty illegal in the UK for T Mobile to do to my knowledge, I've never heard of any mobile phone provider censoring or modifying messages. That would be utterly abhorrent, akin to Royal Mail opening your letters and changing what they say before they deliver them.
If your provider is actually doing that, I'd take them to court, because that's super evil. Even if they're supposedly using the ability for "good", eventually it won't be.
Terms of service for Britain from companies like Meta are increasingly changing to their default US ones though. I’ve read that it’s because the EU protection is gone.
In theory, yes? But it seems they're applying the policy more arbitrarily than they claim. At least that's what was demonstrated by the youtuber.
Not more arbitrarily then they claim. They didn't say what criteria they are using for obscurity. You are confusing obscure domain with obscure TLD.
The youtubers example is a self proclaimed "blockchain-based media platform" and is definitely an obscure domain.
All that said, they shouldn't be blocking obscure domains in the first place.
Google doesn't have a handle one their spam controls either. They've been backsliding for a long time.
Source: been fighting SEO search spam for 2 years. Tired of seeing spam from sex trafficking. DO SOMETHING GODDAMMIT.
Wish I could get my friends to all use Signal as well. It's a solid comm app.
Hey! I discovered this awhile ago. They filter all world domains, and there was another TLD they filter too, but I can't remember now. I tried sending to iPhone and Android users with the same results.
I can verify that this happened to me on t-mobile about 2 weeks ago, was unable to send a link to my community to a friend. Another reason on a long list of reasons to hate t-mobile.
Consider possibly sending a letter of complaint to the Cali Atty Gen and your state's Atty Gen as well as Consumer Affairs and the BBB.
Never use your ISPs DNS.
That will not help here. SMS doesn't involve DNS.
Right. Just a reminder.
I feel like this is common across any major mobile network.
I'm on AT&t and do a lot of research into weird and niche topics for work and send links back and forth and I've never had any of my SMS stripped
Possibly however the test they did in the youtube video said ATT and Verizon hadn't started doing this as of that time.