FCC Consumer Advisory Committee Approves Robotext Recommendations
The FCC Consumer Advisory Committee approved a report on robotexts Tuesday, during what is scheduled to be the last meeting of the group's current iteration. The vote was unanimous with only AARP abstaining. AARP didn’t comment on why it abstained. The committee turned down an Incompas amendment on the difficulty some public interest groups are reporting gaining access to 10-digit long codes (10DLCs) (see 2208160054). CAC meetings have been virtual since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Last fall, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel circulated a proposed rulemaking on curbing illegal and unwanted robotexts (see 2110180071). The FCC has seen a threefold increase in robotexts since 2019, officials said. The report wasn't released Tuesday.
Text messaging remains “a highly trusted communications platform” for consumers, said John Breyault, National Consumers League vice president-public policy, telecommunication and fraud, who presented the robotext report. The open rate for SMS messages is as high as 98%, compared with 20% for email, he said. Complaints are on the rise, he said. Complaints to the FTC about unwanted texts increased to 377,000 in 2021, from just over 100,000 in 2019, he said.
The CAC report recommends the FCC encourage “broader adoption of industry best practices related to stopping illegal and unwanted text messages, including CTIA’s messaging principles and best practices,” Breyault said. Consumers can also raise concerns by sending a text message to 7726, he noted.
The FCC asked the group to look at implications for public safety answering points, some of which now take emergency texts, but the group found little information on any problems today, Breyault said. “We did not make a recommendation -- we simply urged the commission to continue monitoring the issue, to make sure that this does not become a bigger problem,” he said. Solutions must not “negatively impact legitimate emergency text messages,” he said. The group also didn’t find a significant problem affecting people with disabilities, Breyault said. The report recommends “more education and targeted outreach to the disability community to help enhance awareness of tools like 7726,” he said.
Lindsay Stern, Incompas policy adviser, proposed a one-sentence add to a footnote in the report, which would cite the work of the Coalition for Open Messaging. Adding the line “would help acknowledge another side of the 10DLC issue,” Stern said: “We have members who are using 10DLC, so we understand the benefits of it, but some of their customers have expressed concern and that’s why we wanted to raise it today.” No other CAC members supported the amendment.
“’Spam texts, while no less significant a priority than spam, are sometimes a less visible problem, but they ought not to be,” said FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington. “As we see from the constantly evolving practices of scammers, to avoid safeguards put in place to prevent robocalls, scammers similarly are becoming more sophisticated in the use of illegal robotexts,” he said. The FCC needs to “empower carriers with the tools to stop illegal robotexts” while protecting the billions of legal text messages transmitted across networks each day, he said.
“Everyone with a cellphone knows that robotexts are on the rise,” said Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, in prerecorded remarks. “Here at the FCC we received over 8,500 complaints about unwanted text messages in the first half of 2022 alone” and more than 12 billion spam texts reportedly were sent in the U.S. in July, which translates to about 44 per person, he said.
“This is much more than just an annoyance,” Starks said: “A rise in robotexts means a rise in robotext scams. Bad actors are taking advantage of our increased use of texting to stay connected with our friends and family.” By using texts, scammers can combine the deceptive practices of email phishing and robocalls and “trick consumers into sharing sensitive information or clicking on malicious links,” he said.
The FCC recently extended to Sept. 21 the deadline for nominations for the next iteration of the CAC (see 2208100022).