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The cost of sending texts has gone to effectively zero, so there's no barrier to someone sending one to all the numbers in sequence. At least, until the phone c
by chiph 6y ago
The cost of sending texts has gone to effectively zero, so there's no barrier to someone sending one to all the numbers in sequence. At least, until the phone company catches on and blocks you.
The one I got late last night was pretending to be from the US Postal Service, prompting me to click on an anonymous link in order to "rescedule delivery"
- dillondoyle 6y agoGoing to get worse SCOTUS just ruled saying a very strict reading definition on robocall to be only random or sequential numbers. So if you already have a list say bought from a 3rd party company of all the phones in the US sounds like you can bulk send now no repercussions. In my field - politics - campaigns use tools like Hustle which are basically mechanical turk clickers to get around these rules. I'm thinking personally this will change...
- nradov 6y agoHave you actually read the whole SCOTUS decision? Because that's not at all what it said.
- URSpider94 6y agoI haven’t seen a clear analysis of the decision’s impact. I’ve read it, it’s quite brief. As I understand it, this decision essentially guts the blanket prohibition on spam text messages to cell phones. The rest of the law refers to restrictions on calls to “residential” phone lines, which does not include cell phones, so it’s not clear that there are any other limitations on texts to cell phones - do you see it differently? This brings up the side issue that the act doesn’t ever mention text messages at all ... everyone has interpreted them to be covered as if they were phone calls, but that’s never been tested at the Supreme Court level.
- sgerenser 6y agoThe decision was unanimous and is really the only possible conclusion from a plain reading of the law. The court didn’t “gut” anything, it’s just a bad law. It’s up to Congress to enact a law that says what they actually want the law to do.
- calvinmorrison 6y agoThat's because Congress has abdicated its role and we live in a appartjik state where the executive appoints the judicial body and the judicial body legislates from the bench while the admin creates executive actions or has agencies create rules that have the weight of laws. The system will continue to not work when Congress does not do it's job.
- URSpider94 6y agoIt gutted it, in the sense that we've been operating under an interpretation of the law for the past 20 years and this ruling changes that interpretation dramatically. The law wasn't so much badly written, as technology has completely changed in the time since then. As an example, if this law were written today, I'm not sure that cell phones would get special status. They were put in the same category as medical emergency lines, because "radiotelephones" were very rare and expensive to operate, whereas today every 12 year old has one.
- sgerenser 6y agoNo, the law was badly written, at least if the goal is to limit all robocalling and not just robocalling using sequential or randomized numbers. The law essentially says "it is illegal to call someone using an autodialer, where an autodialer is a device that makes calls to phone numbers using a sequential or randomized algorithm." It's pretty clear then that automatically dialing from a prepared list of actual phone numbers is not against this law. If they wanted it to cover the latter case, they could have easily included that in the law, even 20+ years ago.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dillondoyle 6y agoI read scotusblog and an excerpt i think kagan in axios? what am I misunderstanding?
- chiph 6y agoCan Congress use their franking privilege to send texts? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franking#Franking_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franking#Franking_privilege
- riffic 6y agoThat particular privilege only exists for the postal service, not the 'ma bell' telecommunications network. edit: but now I'm curious if franking privileges were ever extended to telegrams.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vanviegen 6y agoThat's interesting. SMS wholesale prices in my part of the world (Western Europe) are still at around $0.07. This seems to indicate some kind of market failure. But whatever it is, it's fine by me, as I can still count the number of spam/scam text message I ever received on one hand. So how can we cause the email market to fail in a similar way? ;-)
- johannes1234321 6y ago> That's interesting. SMS wholesale prices in my part of the world (Western Europe) are still at around $0.07. Isn't it rather they was it is supposed to be? - "Everybody" uses messengers for communication. SMS has lost that battle. Whoever uses SMS does so due to a need.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoThat's interesting. Where I live I have unlimited text messages and minutes for €5/month. So whenever I want to text someone, I just use SMS - I don't have to think if they use Whatsapp, Messenger or something else. (Apple hijacks them but is doing so more or less transparently, so I don't mind.)
- smabie 6y agoIs that true tho? Me and my friends use SMS a lot. But maybe other people don't?
- grishka 6y agoI don't remember when I last sent an SMS. 99% of my SMS messages are various notifications, reminders, and 2fa codes. The remaining 1% is spam.
- ghaff 6y agoIn the US, pretty much everyone I know uses SMS/iMessage (in addition to the use of SMS for verification, appointment reminders, etc.) The main exception is Google Chat at work because we use GSuite. Sometimes Twitter DM if I don't have someone's email handy. But I have a total of 1 friend in Europe who I use Facebook Messenger with.
- fourier456 6y agoFor whatever reason, I find it creepy to read about other people having received the same spam that I did.
- wruza 6y agoI think the opposite is true: still quite high costs are the cause of SMS spam. If the carriers did not profit from this, they would have destroyed SMS spam as a phenomenon on the same day.
- posguy 6y agoAT&T, Verizon, US Cellular and T-Mobile have all imposed fees on Application to Person SMSes, so they definitely are making more money off this: https://www.plivo.com/blog/a2p-10dlc/ https://www.plivo.com/blog/a2p-10dlc/