T-Mobile customers were subject to a weird surprise with\neven weirder consequences. Texters found themselves shadowbanned by using the\nsilliest and most innocuous of words in their SMS messages. \u201cBelly\u201d was the\nculprit. Neither profane nor salacious, \u201cbelly\u201d was a hot button word for T-Mobile\u2019s\nservers, leading all who spoke of bellies unable to send or receive text\nmessages without any warning or notification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is\nShadowbanning?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Shadowbanning is a process by which a user is banned without\nany form of formal notification. Shadowbanned users often don\u2019t know that\nthey\u2019ve been banned, as it seems as though the service is working perfectly\nfine. Shadowbanned T-Mobile users thought their \u201cbelly\u201d texts were making their\nway to the recipient successfully, but they never appeared on the other end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reddit\nWas on the Case<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone who ever wants to know what\u2019s really going on with\npublic opinion and response in any scenario should always turn to Reddit.\nThere\u2019s an active Reddit community for almost everything under the sun, and the\nT-Mobile Reddit community got right to work. Volunteers found they were unable\nto send the word \u201cbelly\u201d, but were able to successfully send compound words\nlike \u201cbellyrub\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Users claiming to be T-Mobile employees chimed in, claiming\nthat the belly bans were visible on their end and that the ban structure works\nas follows: the first shadowban for sending a banned word lasts for ten days,\nand the second ban is a ninety day ban for repeat offenders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n T-Mobile\u2019s\nResponse<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n T-Mobile quietly responded by lifting the bans within hours,\nproviding no official explanation as to how or why the ban was imposed. Clever\nspeculation seems to imply that it was a misconfiguration of a spam management\nsystem, seemingly targeting \u201cget rid of unwanted belly fat\u201d solicitation text\nmessages that were sent to users of the carrier\u2019s service. Although spam\nfiltering is a desirable service for many T-Mobile users who are burdened by\nunwanted solicitations reaching their text messaging inbox, there are slightly\nsinister implications of what this filtering technology can mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What This\nLikely Means <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Prior to the belly debacle, most T-Mobile users had never\nconsidered that their carrier could read or filter their text messages. The\nmost astounding aspect of this discovery was the apparent lack of privacy. In\norder to filter these messages and implement the shadow ban, T-Mobile had to\nimplement technology that would allow them to pry into users\u2019 private\ncommunication. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Process of elimination showed that the spy was in fact T-Mobile.\nWhen people using iMessage on their T-Mobile iPhones sent the offending word,\ntheir messages were sent without hindrance or interruption. Because iMessage\nautomatically encrypts messages end to end, T-Mobile didn\u2019t know what they\ncontained and could not automate a ban. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A federal court case in 2010 established the right for\nmobile carriers to read texts sent over their services and implement bans\nwithout informing users that they were doing so. It should come as a shock to\nno one that T-Mobile was the first provider to advocate for that right. They\u2019ve\ntaken the approval and put it to use without the knowledge of their customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t\nWant T-Mobile Reading Your Messages?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The only way to successfully avoid third parties meddling in your private conversations is to exclusively use end-to-end encrypted messaging services. Using a VPN like TorGuard VPN<\/a> in conjunction with encrypted messaging like PrivateMail <\/a>will assure that no third party can read, censor, or block the content you\u2019ve decided to send. If something as inoffensive as \u201cbelly\u201d can have consequences, it\u2019s best not to risk any private conversation through clear messages. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" T-Mobile customers were subject to a weird surprise with even weirder consequences. Texters found themselves shadowbanned by using the silliest and most innocuous of words in their SMS messages. \u201cBelly\u201d was the culprit. Neither profane nor salacious, \u201cbelly\u201d was a hot button word for T-Mobile\u2019s servers, leading all who spoke of bellies unable to send […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[43,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/privatemail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}