FCC cracks down on spammy text messages
Source: CNN Business
Washington CNN — The Federal Communications Commission is cracking down on spammy text messages with new rules for telecom companies, citing a surge of consumer complaints in recent years tied to unwanted robotexts.
The new rules require phone providers to block text messages from suspicious sources including phone numbers that appear to be “invalid, unallocated, or unused.” Carriers will also have to block text messages coming from phone numbers that claim not to ever send text messages, or that the government has identified as numbers not used for texting, the FCC said.
The move mirrors a similar US government effort to shut down illegal robocalls, which has led to at least one phone provider being cut off entirely from the US telephone network. Robocall monitoring services say the effort has largely been successful at reducing the volume of robocalls. But in recent years, an explosion of spam and scam text messages appears to have taken their place, leading to more than 18,000 consumer complaints at the FCC last year.
The FCC is mulling additional regulations that could, among other things, apply Do Not Call registry protections to text messages for the first time. The FCC said it is also considering making it harder for marketers to use a single consumer consent to flood that user with calls and text messages from multiple sources and numbers.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/tech/fcc-spam-text-crackdown/index.html
They need to do something!
I know when I was with Sprint before T-Mobile gobbled them up, Sprint finally started filtering out those damn "extended car warranty" junk texts.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Several calls / day.
I live close to Ford's nightmare Blue Oval City, a 6 sq mile environmental disaster...
And it's often hard if they are using a spoofed phone number although if you can confirm he area code is foreign, you can often block those yourself.
Annoying as can be. Several calls per day.
The GC for Ford called the town hall looking for 1,500 qualified construction workers. Pfffft... the lady laughed when she told me about the call.
They'd be lucky to get 1,500 warm bodies. Qualified? Hahaha!
The majority of people here are so lazy & inept, it's truly unimaginable.
The story I tell people to put it into daily life context is the time I ran through McDonald's for a small burger on the way to a meeting.
Got down the street to inhale the grease (only quick option here) & there was no burger on the bun.
Several friends have gotten completely raw burger patties on their buns... just as one example.
Everything here is that way, sadly.
So finding 1,500 skilled construction workers in this region who are willing to work? 
Obviously, there isn't housing or infrastructure to accommodate all the workers, or the 6k projected employees, so the foreign investors are harassing the hell out of every homeowner I know. 
Damned bill for 1 line is $67/mo as it is.
For very spotty coverage.
I tell them sure, come and get me. They haven't arrested me yet. 
Various utilities, banks, etc. threaten to close accounts I don't even have with them. I tell them go ahead and close it. 
Living in a very different area code from where my cell phone number is from makes it easy to screen scam/spam numbers.
I’ll get a txt from someone who addresses me by another name, asking if I’m ready to sell my house, at another address than which I live, and to reply stop if I don’t want any more messages 🫤
I block the number, but they just use a different one the next time.
✌🏻
are emails to texts, so when I first reported it, I got a text thanking me for the report, but could I supply the phone number it came from. No, I can't!
