Published: November 2022

FCC should prioritize protecting consumers from widescale nuisance and fraud facilitated through unwanted and illegal text messages

Advocates filed comments with the FCC urging the agency to take steps to protect consumers from unwanted and illegal text messages, including illegal telemarketing texts; fundraising, political, survey and similar types of messages; scam robotexts; and non-SMS text messaging.

In response to a notice of proposed rulemaking, Consumer Action and seven other advocacy organizations submitted comments to the FCC urging the agency to take steps to protect consumers from widescale nuisance and fraud facilitated through unwanted and illegal text messages place through the U.S. telephone network. The groups recommended that the FCC: 1) protect consumers from illegal telemarketing texts by clarifying its own regulations in a

way that that would dramatically reduce the number of texts that violate these rules; 2) ensure that the voluntary efforts employed by CTIA and its industry partners to place

meaningful limits on unwanted texts sent by law-abiding groups for fundraising, political, survey, or other purposes remain effective; 3) prioritize the development of ways to eliminate scam texts, especially those that include URLs (which often lead to imposter websites that solicit personal information to be used for theft of funds from accounts, identity theft and other scams; and 4) consider how it might protect consumers from non-SMS text messaging, such as iMessage, and scams perpetrated over other messaging apps.

Lead Organization

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and National Consumer Law Center

More Information

Read the letter here.

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