The Federal Communications Commission released a draft order that would rewrite the agency’s “revoke all” rule – an action that the American Bankers Association has long advocated. The FCC will vote on the draft order at its Sept. 30 open meeting.
Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, with limited exceptions, a bank or other business can place an autodialed or prerecorded voice call or text message only with the prior express consent of the called party. Called parties have the right to revoke their consent to receive the calls.
Under the revoke all rule, a bank or other business is required to treat a consumer’s revocation of consent under the TCPA to receive one type of call or message as a revocation of all consented-to calls and messages, even if that was not the consumer’s intent. Consequently, if a consumer responds ‘STOP’ to a text message from their bank on any topic – such as marketing messages – the rule would effectively require the bank to stop sending them all messages, including fraud alerts notifying them of potentially suspicious activity on their account.
The rule also requires a caller to treat any possible expression of revocation as a revocation under the TCPA if a “reasonable person” would understand the words to have conveyed a request to revoke consent.
Revoking consent
The FCC’s draft order would allow banks and other callers to designate any one of the following as the exclusive means for the recipient to revoke consent as long as the caller “clearly and conspicuously” disclosed the designated method to revoke consent: an automated, interactive voice or key press-activated opt-out mechanism on a call; replying to an incoming text message with “stop,” “quit,” “end,” “revoke,” “opt out,” “cancel,” or “unsubscribe”; and/or using a website or telephone number designated by the caller to process opt-out requests.
In addition, the draft order would allow callers to interpret a revocation request made in response to an informational call or text message as applying only to the specific category of informational automated calls and text messages to which the revocation was directed and not to all communications.
In June, ABA joined with the National Consumer Law Center and ACA International in proposing a rewrite of the revoke all rule that would allow the caller to interpret a revocation request as applying only to the category of messages to which the revocation was directed. The groups’ proposed revisions also would allow a caller to designate a prescribed list of exclusive, reasonable means of revocation in the message sent to the called party.
‘Provided number’ condition
The draft order also would modify the “provided number” condition that allows banks and other financial institutions to place calls under an existing exemption for fraud alerts only to numbers that were provided by the customer. It would allow institutions to place calls under the exemption to any wireless telephone number obtained from a “reliable source,” which the FCC would define as a number supplied by a spouse or other family member who is authorized to be on the account, obtained when the customer calls the financial institution, or included in records obtained from another financial institution (such as through a merger or acquisition).
In comments submitted in January, ABA stated that in many cases a “bank may have acquired a customer’s number through reliable means,” including through the three “use cases” described in the draft order.
