The American Bankers Association and six associations today urged the Federal Communications Commission to take additional action to combat text messages sent by bad actors that impersonate banks and other legitimate companies. The joint comment letter was submitted in response to a recent FCC proposal that, among other provisions, would require mobile wireless providers that originate text messages to block texts from a sender after they receive notice from the FCC that the sender is transmitting suspected illegal texts. The associations last year proposed that originating providers be subject to this blocking requirement.
The associations also expressed support for an FCC proposal to require providers to make “email-to-text” an opt-in service, so that cell phone subscribers wishing to receive these types of messages would first have to opt into the service. The groups had previously raised concerns with the proclivity of bad actors using email-to-text as a primary means to place a large volume of illegal texts quickly.
In addition, building on recent testimony that ABA’s Paul Benda provided to the Senate Banking Committee, the groups urged the FCC to propose that providers be required to provide access in real time to reported “SPAM” texts—that is, suspicious texts that consumers forward to #7726—to banks and other companies who wish to use the data to find impersonation texts relevant to their company.
