Human beings surely have all the intelligence at their disposal, but another thing that they have in spades is a clear tendency to make mistakes. This tendency has, in fact, went on full display quite a few times throughout our history, with each appearance practically forcing us to look for a defensive cover. We will, on our part, find the stated cover once we bring dedicated regulatory bodies into the fold. Having a well-defined authority across each and every area was a game-changer, as it instantly gave us a cushion against our many shortcomings. By doing so, it, of course, introduced us to a reality that we could have never conceived otherwise, but unfortunately for us, the utopia was pretty short-lived. The reason behind this setback, notably enough, stemmed from technology’s arrival; considering the creation’s layered nature was quick to allow everyone a chance at exploiting others for their own benefit. To top it all, the whole runner started to materialize on such a massive scale that it expectantly overwhelmed our governing forces and sent them back to the drawing board. After a long time in the wilderness, though, it looks like the regulatory contingent is finally ready to put-together a comeback. This has become more and more evident over the recent past, and FCC’s latest move can very well solidify the shift moving forward.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has officially proposed a new set of rules to lead a charge against the infamous “robotext” campaigns. Under the new rules, the agency has asked cell providers to take a network-level approach towards texts that seem to be from invalid, unallocated or unused numbers, and numbers on do-not-originate (DNO) lists. Furthermore, the proposal focuses on educating consumers about how they can opt out from all those policies that allow companies to sell or share personal numbers. Apart from it, the FCC is also mulling over the idea of bringing caller ID technologies to text messaging so to significantly reduce the risk in play here. Talk about robotext campaigns a little bit, they are basically barrages of scam texts sent by malicious actors and large criminal organizations for the purpose of breaching someone’s cybersecurity. These texts can be disguised as anything from unpaid bills to package delivery snafus. Their high success rate also means that they have been on a steep rise lately, with complaints to FCC about unwanted texts exceeding 15,300 in the year 2021.
“The American people are fed up with scam texts, and we need to use every tool we have to do something about it,” said FCC Chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel. “Recently, scam text messaging has become a growing threat to consumers’ wallets and privacy. More can be done to address this growing problem and today we are formally starting an effort to take a serious, comprehensive, and fresh look at our policies for fighting unwanted robotexts.”
At the moment, the FCC is seeking a public comment on all the proposed measures.