4 ms·
The fact that phishing and scamming are a fine, and not immediate termination/referral to the cops is embarrassing
by petee 3y ago
The fact that phishing and scamming are a fine, and not immediate termination/referral to the cops is embarrassing
- NavinF 3y agoWhat do you think the cops are gonna do about it?
- petee 3y agoObviously nothing if it doesn't get reported.
- acdha 3y agoProsecute them? It’s not 1994, most countries have a track record of prosecuting internet crime.
- gruez 3y agoAnd what if the perpetrator is half way around the world?
- acdha 3y agoIs T-Mobile is signing commercial contracts with random strangers around the world, that seems like a bigger problem.
- NavinF 3y agoAre you serious? My real name is in my profile; Try filing a police report saying that I engaged in "phishing, smishing, and social engineering". I think you'll find that nothing happens. I can give you some fake evidence if you wanna be extra convincing, but your report will still end up in the junk pile along with the rest
- avianlyric 3y agoWhat makes you think they’re not reporting stuff to cops? These are fines sent to message aggregators and gateways. Providers like Twilio who have thousands of different customers, and provide a simple on ramp to sending SMS into mobile network infrastructure. Terminating those relationships after a single violation would simple result in the eradication of all SMS sending services, except physical mobiles phones.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- petee 3y agoIm only basing that on the language used on the page, which says only multiple violations may get you blocked. Perhaps I'm just confused about who is using it, and for what; I was under the impression this was for bulk mailing. But either way the whole industry has an abuse problem thats not really being taken seriously, as $2000 is barely a slap on the wrist -- what is a company's incentive to keep their platform clean with such a paltry fine? But maybe the SMS on ramp shouldn't be so simple? These are businesses and they have undoubtedly calculated the risk of easy onboarding vs scammers getting through
- nucleardog 3y agoThese don’t need to be hugely punitive, just shift the economics enough to make doing the right thing less costly than the wrong thing. What do you think the average revenue per customer is at Bandwidth or Twilio? A couple thousand dollars in fines for a violation should be plenty of incentive to screen their customers better. If they start charging them $500k for a violation or something, these senders would just drop them entirely. Sure, you’d get rid of the junk… and everything else too.
- llamaInSouth 3y ago> Terminating those relationships after a single violation would simple result in the eradication of all SMS sending services, except physical mobiles phones. Might not be a bad thing... it would stop a lot of spam and stop companies from using SMS for 2FA
- n2d4 3y agoIt's much more likely that T-Mobile sends a fine to Bandwidth (who then just forwards it to the customer). T-Mobile can't just terminate business with Bandwidth along with all of their genuine customers, so a fine encourages them to implement measures themselves.
- unyttigfjelltol 3y agoUS contract law generally doesn't support "fines" under private contracts. You might justify it as liquidated damages, but here T-Mobile expressly used improper punitive terminology, and didn't require customers to expressly accept these particular provisions either. The revision looks like a mistake by T-Mobile, or else a calculated risk that a class actions somewhow are unavailable and anyone they "fine" will accept it to avoid drawing law enforcement attention.
- otterley 3y agoThe actual verbiage provided by T-Mobile isn’t provided here, so we don’t know what the language is. The word “fine” might merely be a characterization made by bandwidth.com.