If you are receiving or dealing with spam messages containing abusive language (often referred to as "gaali" in Hindi), there are several ways to handle and report them. How to Handle and Report Abusive Spam Do Not Reply
Engaging in or creating tools for gaali spam can lead to serious repercussions:
Select Block or Restrict. Blocking will prevent them from messaging you entirely, while restricting will hide their comments and messages from public view without notifying them. SMS / Text Messages Open the spam message. Tap the sender's number or contact name at the top.
Step 4: Complain to the Authorities (Cyber Cell)
In India, sending obscene or abusive messages is a criminal offense under Section 67 of the IT Act, 2000 (Punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) and Section 294 of the IPC (Obscene acts and songs).
Tips to Avoid Spam Messages
Paper Title: The Anatomy of Hostile Spam: Detection and Mitigation Strategies for Profanity-Based Spam ("Gaali Spam")
Date: October 26, 2023 Category: Trust & Safety / Content Moderation Audience: Platform Administrators, Community Managers, NLP Engineers
Tier 2: Heuristic Analysis (The Behavioral Layer)
- Rate Limiting: Flagging accounts sending messages at inhuman speeds.
- Repetition Detection: Identifying users sending the same or similar abusive strings repeatedly within a short window.
- New Account Flagging: Assigning lower trust scores to accounts created within the last 24-48 hours.
Provoke a reaction: Engaging in "flame wars" or cyberbullying.
Common formats and channels
- One-to-one SMS and instant messages (WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal)
- Group chats and broadcast lists
- Social media comments and direct messages (Facebook, Instagram, X)
- Forum and blog comment sections
- Automated bot accounts posting abusive replies
- Mass-email campaigns with insulting subject lines or body content