Comment by MSVi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MSVi | Hacker News Reader

So I actually work in the tech telecom industry and can hopefully shed some knowledge on these topics!

The SMS/MMS space is surprisingly "new" in the telecom sense. Many carriers and providers don't have all of the tools built out that you'd expect to handle spam at the scale they're seeing. From what I've experienced, AT&T has the best spam filtering among the carriers, but again they're all pretty hit-and-miss for now.

When it comes to toll-free messaging all carriers seem to do pretty well (as it's easy to detect the same message being sent out 100k+ times from a singular number), but it becomes much more difficult as more companies move over to unregistered or "local" traffic. Businesses are able to send from local numbers using a technique called "Snowshoeing", or spreading the messages out across multiple numbers and dodge large message volumes from any singular number.

While many of these messages are annoying (such as political messaging/marketing), it's not illegal. However, if you receive legitimate spam messages, all carriers allow you to forward the message to the number 7726.

Be careful if the spammer is spoofing your number as the sender however, because carriers are not smart enough to determine the legitimate sender yet and it will result in your actual number being marked as spam. From what I've heard, being able to detect spoofed sms/mms messages will be coming some time in 2023 though.

Something must have changed with AT&T because up until like 6 weeks I was getting bombarded with spam texts, like a dozen a day, then they just suddenly stopped.

I've heard that forwarding spam texts to 7726 ends up counterproductive because that system opens up any included links, letting spammers know they've hit a legit active number. Is there any truth to that?

all carriers allow you to forward the message to the number 7726.

Wait ... you mean there is something ordinary customers can actually do?

This is the first time I have ever heard of this feature. How come the telcos aren't publicizing this?

It's a great question, and I had never heard of it either until I started working in the space.

Each carrier does have a small blurb on their website, but who would even think to look for it?[1][2][3]

1. https://www.att.com/support/pages/report-call-or-text

2. https://www.verizon.com/about/account-security/smishing-and-....

3. https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/help-with-sc...

Telcos spend billions on marketing every year. It's shocking they can't divert a sliver of this to PSAs and promos highlighting this feature.

This is one of the biggest pain points for customers, and potentially a huge source of data the telcos (and regulators) could use to stop specific scams and scammers.

To someone not in USA, this somehow resembles Second-ammendment type discussions.

We have an apologist for why it shouldn't be so bad. It should be getting better soon. And the law allows it. And please protect yourself.

From elsewhere in the world: it is nowhere near so bad where I am. This is probably something largely unique to USA.

Part of the reason is that our antiquated infrastructure makes it easy. The other part though is that we're a huge target to all countries. I'm speaking anecdotally, but about 90% of my SPAM calls originate from India.

yeah they end up routing their calls through some small telecom like "Crazy Eddie's" which give them some legitimacy in the eyes of the phone network

What individual action can we take to get the regulators to fix this?

Great question, I can only give a qualified answer regarding text messages, as that's where my expertise lies.

In 2018 the FCC moved away from regulating sms/mms messages as they classified them as "information services" vs. "telecommunications services", meaning that the carriers have been left to create their own rules and enforce them. Without the FCC legal backing, it's much more difficult to stop illegitimate businesses from scaling out their practices.

Meanwhile legitimate businesses in this space have fallen back to the guidelines from the TCPA[1] when answering questions such as:

"When should we send messages?"

"What content is allowed?"

"How should we handle users opting-out of our messages?"

meaning that each business handles them differently, and pushes the envelope however they see fit. Some states have been passing their own mini-TCPAs[2], but these too are limited in their capacity and mostly focus on "telecommunications services".

I'd say that if we want to get serious about stopping spam texts, the best solution would be to talk to your representatives and potentially try to convince the FCC to reclassify text messages as part of "telecommunications services". However, political sends are very large in this space, so I'm sure that large pushback would be expected.

1. https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/tcpa-rules.pdf

2. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/1120/BillText/er/...

This is a non-answer.

Carriers are old, monolithic, latent, greedy machines with no ability to innovate or 'do' that much of anything, more likely they want to sit on their control of networks, extract rent, and block anyone from doing anything else.

SMS/MMS could only be 'new' in that context.

If their existential decline was in front of them, they would not be able to adapt quickly enough.

In the 2000's Carriers tried to charge 10 cents per WAP page.

They wanted to control all app distribution with their Kafquaesue App Stores right out of 1980's Soviet Technology.

They used to dictate the terms of most of the gear on their networks.

One of the most important things that Steve Jobs ever did was told them literally to 'F OFF' and that they would never, ever have any control over anything on the iPhone.

Jobs agreed to that tiny little AT&T logo for a while, that's all they ever god.

The App Store Duopoly isn't ideal, but it's a 'competent oligarchy' - meaning that suff moves and evolves, it generally works.

It's be really nice to move to an all digital standard for calls, messaging etc.. and then force Network Neutrality (i.e. they can only bill for 'Quality of Service') and keep them moving bits.

That, and separation of ownership of 'content' and bits as well. Having Verizon and A&T own major networks is just bad, there's no advantage.

Finally, due to the limited access and the issues of 'public domain' with respect to airwaves, there needs to be regulation around pricing.

If there were 100 carriers to chose from in every town, that wouldn't be a problem of course.

Completely agreed, carriers are just lazy monoliths. There's no shortage of creative solutions regarding spam. It's a matter of willingness, or the lack of it, that stands in the way of stopping it. Covid showed that remote work is indeed possible for many and that that meeting really could have been an email; and I feel this is a similar problem. It's only a problem because those in power let it be.

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