FCC Gives Carriers the Option To Block Text Messages (cnet.com) 107
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: The Federal Communications Commission said it's getting tough on text message spam by clarifying that phone companies can block unwanted texts. At its monthly meeting Wednesday, the Republican-led agency voted 3-1 to classify SMS text messages as a so-called Title I information service under the Telecom Act. The three Republicans on the FCC, which voted to adopt the classification, said this would allow phone companies to block spam text messages.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the new classification would empower wireless providers to stop unwanted text messages. "The FCC shouldn't make it easier for spammers and scammers to bombard consumers with unwanted texts," he said during the meeting. "And we shouldn't allow unwanted messages to plague wireless messaging services in the same way that unwanted robocalls flood voice services." But he said that's what would happen if the FCC were to classify text messages as a Title II telecommunications service under the law. Jessica Rosenworcel, the lone Democrat on the FCC, disagrees with the classification. "Today's decision offers consumers no new ability to prevent robotexts," she said."It simply provides that carriers can block our text messages and censor the very content of those messages themselves."
She says the FCC did the same thing to the internet last year when it repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules. "That means on the one-year anniversary of the FCC's misguided net neutrality decision -- which gave your broadband provider the power to block websites and censor online content -- this agency is celebrating by expanding those powers to also include your text messages," she added.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the new classification would empower wireless providers to stop unwanted text messages. "The FCC shouldn't make it easier for spammers and scammers to bombard consumers with unwanted texts," he said during the meeting. "And we shouldn't allow unwanted messages to plague wireless messaging services in the same way that unwanted robocalls flood voice services." But he said that's what would happen if the FCC were to classify text messages as a Title II telecommunications service under the law. Jessica Rosenworcel, the lone Democrat on the FCC, disagrees with the classification. "Today's decision offers consumers no new ability to prevent robotexts," she said."It simply provides that carriers can block our text messages and censor the very content of those messages themselves."
She says the FCC did the same thing to the internet last year when it repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules. "That means on the one-year anniversary of the FCC's misguided net neutrality decision -- which gave your broadband provider the power to block websites and censor online content -- this agency is celebrating by expanding those powers to also include your text messages," she added.
Worthless (Score:3)
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It's a half-win. With this new power only Republican politicians will be able to spam text you.
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Um, it's not about "spam"...
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Buh buh (Score:1)
Pai man bad, Net Googtrality good.
Who Defines "Unwanted" (Score:5, Insightful)
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I suspect that the provider would behave similar to how email systems do with spam filters to cut off those who blast messages off to tons of recipients all at ones. I suspect there will have to be a way for notification systems (such as the ones that schools use to notify parents of closures) to get white listed.
Re:Who Defines "Unwanted" (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Who Defines "Unwanted" (Score:4, Insightful)
they want to charge the originating companies extra fees for the ability to send text messages to their customers rather than charge the customers
Not so fast there! In California they want to start taxing the user for text messages.
Text Message Tax [fortune.com]
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not a fee per text
I didn't say it was a per text fee/tax. I also didn't say it was an existing action, it is something the California "wants" to do. Ie, they want to bill the customer directly for using text messages an additional tax/fee, which the previous post claimed the phone companies wouldn't want to do.
Personally I'm fine with that, as the article mentions that most people would just switch to another messaging platform that doesn't use text messages and tell the phone companies to stuff it. I see this as nothi
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Re:Who Defines "Unwanted" (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly.
I have Spectrum, but don't use their DNS. Just an hour ago, the DNS I use was blocked again for about 30 minutes. This has been happening pretty regularly lately. If I switch to another DNS or go to a VPN, I'm back up on my desktop instantly but all of the other devices in my home stay down unless I change the DNS setting on my router. Setting up a combination of two different DNS providers also seems to help.
This is a recent phenomenon that didn't exist prior to net neutrality. I am also seeing 10-fold increases in streaming bandwidth when I use my VPN.
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Spectrum is far too incompetent to play that kind of DNS game on purpose.
Have you ever heard of email? Spam? (Score:3)
When some completely new idea comes along, it makes sense to ask all kinds of "what if?" questions.
Spam is not new. Well over 90% of emails sent are spam. The reason you receive only a small fraction of the spam os because the provider blocks it. Nothing new about this, we know how this works, how this turns out.
Does Comcast, or any ISP on the entire planet, block all of your email as "unwanted" unless you pay more for a premium service?
Would YOU sign up with a wireless carrier that charged extra for rec
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It's more likely that text messages of the wrong political persuasion, regardless of what the user things (even if they went out of their way to sign up for it) will be determined spam.
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Wait up, who the hell wants bloody blocking, it is my phone device, I should get to decide who can contact it and who cannot. I want allowing and not blocking. I want a phone that is 100% blocked, zero incoming calls allowed, not a one, unless I specifically allow it. All calls blocked except ones allowed in. The provider can logged skipped attempts at contact I can review latter to allow it remain as is, blocked. My device, my choice who can connect in to it.
I have no intention of wasting my life attempti
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Carriers may block or censor our text messages? (Score:1)
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That sounds kind of silly. Who would continue to use a carrier that did that?
Indeed. This isn't comparable to NN for ISPs. Many people have only a single broadband provider. But switching cellular providers is easy.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Carriers may block or censor our text messages (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a question about this since you sound like you might know. Whichever technology the carrier will use to block spam, can it be made small enough so that it can be done on the client's device, maybe giving the user more granular control over what gets through and what doesn't?
I like having spam filtered out (doesn't everyone?) but I'm not fully comfortable letting the carrier make these decisions for me.
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can it be made small enough so that it can be done on the client's device, maybe giving the user more granular control over what gets through and what doesn't?
The problem is that the system itself can get clogged with spam if the carrier doesn't block it. As much as I hate to admit it, they have a point, but I too, would still rather do my own filtering. Maybe we should go back to beepers.
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I don't get any. I'm just offering up an explanation of why it could be advantageous to block the spam as far upstream as possible, so regular traffic can flow. I also have doubts that spam is the real issue, especially when looking at the exceptions to the rules.
The best, simplest solution by far is to demand verifiable caller ID, the ability to block calls/text locally on the phone, and that all these companies be categorized as common carriers. The voters passed by their chance this year, see what happen
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That sounds kind of silly. Who would continue to use a social media platform that did that? The whole point of being on social media is to be able to communicate; if the platform starts working against you on that you had better be looking for a new one.
Except.. there are limited options, really. Your speech in the new town square (primary social media platforms) is already limited; why wouldn't your private speech be limited now as well?
Society as a whole seems to have already tacitly agreed that the town square can be privately owned and controlled. Why would this trend stop there?
The slippery slope is only a fallacy when one is not actually sliding down an ice covered incline towards a precipice.
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Society as a whole seems to have already tacitly agreed that the town square can be privately owned and controlled. Why would this trend stop there?
It was privately owned BEFORE people started using it as a "town square." People migrated their prior town square to the new one because they chose to, and (some) understood that there were conditions to that. As well, BECAUSE it is privately owned, it doesn't owe anyone a damn thing. That's how businesses work, and that's why people point out that a "free market" without some form of regulation designed to protect individuals is a very bad and dangerous thing.
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Control and Flow of Information (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally... (Score:2)
Re: Typical conduct by Shkreli Pai (Score:5, Interesting)
Ideally, it would be something you could freely opt into or out of. Carriers have the advantage that they can anonymously scan incoming messages & keep count of similar ones, escalating the "is this spam?" judgment call to a human once some threshhold is exceeded.
Blocking by origin number sounds nice, but doesn't really work because there's nothing to certify that a SMS sender actually IS who they claim to be. You can block spamming SMS numbers all day & ultimately accomplish nothing besides wasting your time because they probably weren't REALLY using that number anyway.
It's why Gmail is so good at catching spam... they see EVERYONE'S incoming messages & flag similar messages sent to lots of users for human scrutiny.
The representative who opposed the bill isn't entirely *wrong*, but at the moment there aren't many better options that can be implemented *quickly* to reduce sms spam. It comes down to, "is it worth the potential risk of telco tyranny to reduce our spam load NOW"? As long as it's done in a way you can freely opt into or out of, I'd say yeah.
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Ideally, it would be something you could freely opt into or out of. Carriers have the advantage that they can anonymously scan incoming messages & keep count of similar ones, escalating the "is this spam?" judgment call to a human once some threshhold is exceeded.
It's too vast a problem for humans to make the final decision.
Blocking by origin number sounds nice, but doesn't really work because there's nothing to certify that a SMS sender actually IS who they claim to be.
The phone company won't use Caller ID info, they'll use ANI, which is far, far harder to fake. Or something even harder to fake.
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For me it was about 10 - 1 Democrats texting me about voting, vs Republicans. They came from all sorts of different numbers, no way to stop... hellish.
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It's also a matter of where you are. What I got was overwhelmingly Democrat (only one Republican), because this is California, with a f*cked up primary system that allows the final ballot to only have Democrats.
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....with a f*cked up primary system that allows the final ballot to only have Democrats.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2... [cnn.com]
California has a “jungle primary” system in which the top two vote-getters in the primary face off in the general election, regardless of party.
Because a party can't put up a decent enough candidate that enough voters will vote for to get past the primary isn't a problem caused by the system, it's a problem caused by the party picking shit candidates that don't reflect the will of the people voting for them.
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It's a problem caused by how stupid, gullible and obedient California voters are.
But when there are no Republican candidates on the ballot, one does not get election spam from Republicans.
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Were you furiously masturbating while you typed that, Mr. Coward, at what a manly man you must be to spout your homoerotic fantasies anonymously on the internet?
You know you were.
And so does everyone else.
NTTAWWT.
California wants to tax text messages (Score:1)
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Legal, Schmegal! They change the laws to do what ever they want!
HOLY SHIT!!! Who do they think they are, the government or something!!!!!!
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For values of "representative" that only represent the unions, the Hollywood rich, and the occasional Sillycon Valley psycho with enough sense to hire professional lobbyists. Welcome to California. Now go home. Paradise is only for the rich, and their indentured servants (who can eat whatever shit their master put on their plate, and like it).
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You clearly know nothing about California politics. I suspect it's one of many things you know nothing about. Like the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground, thumb test notwithstanding.
Opt-in service? (Score:1)
Does the classification really have to be changed for this?
What would be wrong with the carrier making such a filter available as an opt-in option without the classification change? (free or payed, regardless)
That seems a common sense solution.
Half-assed as usual (Score:3)
What they should have done is require telecoms to verify number ownership. Most of these calls and texts are coming from unknown sources using fake CIDs. If an incoming connection comes from source that is different from the one that 'owns' the number, then you know it's fake.
ie: If 555-1234-5678 is owned by Bell, but you get a connection from a voip provider in India, it's a pretty safe bet that it's not a legit call.
But this would need to be legislated because there's no way any telecom will bother to co-operate with this unless they are forced to.
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That wouldn't be all that hard
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Permanent block may not work well - if they are faking the number, you've now blocked a third party (or an unused number) that had nothing to do with the spam.
More censorship (Score:3)
Thats your words a big brand and big gov wants to look at and then remove.
What next? Voice? Say the "unwanted" words in real time and get "talking" on the phone blocked?
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That is, in fact, what the proposed change will . . . change.
Strangely ... (Score:2)
Can the FCC simply redefine anything they want? (Score:3)
Congress says different laws for information services vs telecommunications services. So the FCC can just take a telecommunication service and relabel it as an information service (or vice versa) to get whatever they want, without bothering to get Congress' permission, or Congress having to change the telecom act.
If this shit is legal, then I know how Trump can get his wall after all, without Congress authorizing a cent. Just redefine the wall as Medicare or preschool services or something like that, and then he can spend any money Congress allocates to those things, on the wall instead. And he can even "make Mexico pay for it" by simply redefining USA as Mexico.
Who chooses? (Score:2)
So who chooses what SMS/MMS messages go through? If the customer has an option to subject themselves or not subject themselves to the carrier's filtering, I'm okay with that.
If the customer doesn't have a choice to enable/disable filtering, it is just a grab for censorship.