Always respond with "You have the wrong number". This is the only way to actually get removed from these lists. It will take a while, because most of the people reaching out to you have paid a data broker for a list, and they get refunds/discounts for bad data, so they will report it back up to the data broker who will remove it. But this takes a while, and that number has already been sold multiple times to various campaigns, and also, its probably on more than one broker's list, so it takes a while to get it removed from all the brokers.
But it has worked for me:
I gave 10$ to a candidate once, and started getting texts every year for four years from multitudes of like-minded campaigns. I just told them wrong number every time and eventually, now, I get no more political spam texts.
No, that’s not the only way. “STOP” is a keyword that most carriers/providers will respect and handle automatically. “You have the wrong number” requires all that human involvement.
What about the people who argue that replying to any message just signals that there is a real person on the other end, causing them to now send even more messages?
But it has worked for me:
I gave 10$ to a candidate once, and started getting texts every year for four years from multitudes of like-minded campaigns. I just told them wrong number every time and eventually, now, I get no more political spam texts.