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Comment by WarOnPrivacy | Hacker News Reader

Major carriers are increasingly hostile to SMS that don't originate from one of their customers' handset.

Killing off this gateway cuts off an avenue of escape that people might use to avoid TCR.

If you haven't heard of TCR, you should check it out because it is negatively impacting you somewhere.

Overseen by TMobile, The Campaign Registry is a pay-to-play scheme that applies to everyone who wants to send SMS to a ATT/TM/Vz user.

To onboard with TCR, applicants have to:

    1) pay up front and pay more and then pay forever 
    2) jump thru needlessly complicated hoops (that become ever-moving goalposts for small biz and end users).
    3) wait weeks->months then GOTO 2 again. And again.

The end result is more and more biz, MNVOs, orgs, etc are abandoning SMS. Trying to comply with TCR is too big a resource-sink for them.

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Good? I want it to be expensive and difficult to send me text messages. I can count on one hand the number of non humans I want to have the ability to send me a text and if this makes spamming financially impossible, I’m willing to deal with the baby getting tossed with the bathwater. There’s nothing so urgent I need from a small business that it can’t be either an email or a text from an employee instead of an automated system.

> Good? I want it to be expensive and difficult to send me text messages

SMS spam continues to flow. Largely from mass senders who can afford the compliance.

Legit SMS from small biz can't afford the cash and headaches.

Why would you or any customer want to receive SMS instead of email when most/all phones, even brick phones now a days, have internet? SMS, to me, feels like a way less secure, less functional, less portable, and more expensive email. It made sense back before basically every plan had a high/no limit internet plan, but now..?

The only real positive, so far as I can see, is the 'instantaneous' send/receive, but again thanks to big plans now a days your email checking every 5 seconds or whatever is basically free, making that benefit more of a technicality than reality.

> SMS, to me, feels like a way less secure, less functional, less portable, and more expensive email.

You can't port email addresses unless you own the domain. For the majority of people SMS is the more portable option because they can freely port their phone number to a different carrier.

"portability" probably refers to being able to access messages from multiple devices, which can be easily done on email but not text messages. People port their phone numbers to get a better plan, but that's rarely done for email. At best there's a handful of privacy conscious people switching gmail for protonmail or whatever.

Everyone just uses Gmail/Hotmail/iCloud/Proton which just don't have the port problem as carriers because you don't have any reason to port since there's no fees and no physical network, you can just accrue more and use mail forwarding with no problem.

that's another cost, have fun getting your emails dropped by microsoft because they don't like your ip addresses unless you pay someone else to send for you

I can always access my email if I have a computer and internet. I cannot access my SMS without my phone. Which, with the sudden battery swelling...

FWIW, this is why I always travel with a spare phone, especially if out of the country.

I've had my laptops battery swell more than any phone

Because to check email your active participation is needed so you must start an application while to accept texting no such action is needed. Thus for short information (read-and-forget) short messaging (SMS or RCS) is more convenient. Of course, you could use a specialized application to check your email account and filter those needing immediate notification, but if such a service is already available what is the reason to generate additional much bigger traffic?

I don't understand where you're coming from here. Both Android and iPhone automatically and passively check emails simulating real time connectivity akin to a messenger. What you said does apply to desktop, but comparing SMS to desktop email is rather odd to say the least.

> Why would you or any customer want to receive SMS instead of email

Because doing me doing tech support over SMS often flows much better than email.

That's one reason but there are a lot.

SMS is lightweight and crazy reliable. You can count on getting text messages when Internet is unavailable.

iOS doesn’t support email encryption. My provider(mailbox.org) offers an option to automatically encrypt all incoming email.

Why would I want small businesses to be able to spam me as well the large ones? I’d prefer no one does, but less is better than more.

> Why would I want small businesses to be able to spam me as well the large ones? I’d prefer no one does, but less is better than more.

For the sake of discussion, let's accept that Dumbutt Inc, of Pikesnot MN is sending out actual sms spam.

Instead of ending the wanted SMS comms between millions of customers and the business they depend on,

how about the recipient of a Dumbutt Inc spam just give them a call tell them to knock it off?

I'll do it myself if it means un-crippling wanted SMS comms.

Because:

1. There is very little actually wanted SMS comms between users and businesses. 90%+ of it is probably 2FA codes anyway, and the rest is tied to some potential transaction.

For the latter, SMS costing even 100x more as normal is irrelevant - we're talking about spending extra $0.1 on confirmation and reminders on a $50+ service (hairdresser, tire change, vet appointment, doc appointment, whatever) - so it shouldn't be disturbing to actual voluntary business between two consenting parties.

2. There's a fuck ton of small businesses out there. I'm not going to call 15 local restaurants, 5 clinics, 12 PV solar peddlers, 20 MLM representatives and a sex shop, to tell them all to "knock it off".

Fortunately, I live in Europe; thanks to GDPR, they don't dare. Except for PV solar peddlers and Bitcoin scams, which have a special place in hell ready for them - and MLM people, which are already in hell, but don't realize it.

Nah. SMS in its terminal stage after losing battle with advertising cancer[0]. There's no point in even trying to save or resurrect it without first getting rid of the sickness - marketing communications.

[0] - https://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

> 2. There's a frak ton of small businesses out there. I'm not going to call 15 local restaurants, 5 clinics, 12 PV solar peddlers, 20 MLM representatives and a sex shop, to tell them all to "knock it off".

Good because none of them are bulk sending sms spam. Or likely sending any biz SMS thanks to TCR.

Meanwhile the actual bulk senders of SMS are happily firehosing it to millions of phones, thanks to the protections they purchase - also thanks to TCR.

> There is very little actually wanted SMS comms between users and businesses.

In total SMS sure. And those corps that send the 90% pay TCR so they can keep sending that unwanted SMS. TCR is a good fit for the biggest spammers.

Conversely, 100% of the SMS I send to my customers are wanted; they pay to support them and SMS is how they want that to happen.

My customers have their own customers - who also want to comm using SMS.

For us, TCR has mostly killed off our SMS access to ur customers. None of my MNVO lines carry SMS any longer, because of the onerous TCR compliance burdens.

Likewise my clients can no longer SMS their customers - even though it has long been an expected part of their relationship.

To recap:

1) TCR harms small biz who send wanted, necessary and consensual SMS.

2) TCR also protect bulk senders of unwanted SMS senders, because they have paid for that protection.

Vigorously throwing shade at 1 while voicing no meaningful objection to 2 seems like an unfortunate position.

Just because an SMS originates from a computer does not make it spam. I like to be notified that my drive up order is ready or for a link to check in at the doctor.

That's why making each message costly is the way to go - it's not discriminating on what or how sent the message, it just forces sending to scale no faster than actual service of the business. A text or two per delivery or a doctors' visit is still a rounding error compared to costs of the transaction itself, but casually spamming hundreds of thousands of people becomes a noticeable cost.

You're right. Just the other day I got this annoying spam message from my local pharmacy - "your prescription is ready for pick up". Why would I want that? And my hairdresser too? "Reminder: you have an appointment tomorrow at 10AM" wow they'll send anything to try to get my business.

If these were legit businesses, they would send it to my email so it can be listed with all the GeekSquad invoices I receive from Gmail addresses. Of course, because everyone is just like the average HN user, they know how to set up intricate filters to prioritize the GeekSquad invoices.

> You're right. Just the other day I got this annoying spam message from my local pharmacy

Right. That's who TCR doesn't stop.

But lets say you buy a DIY home upgrade from a local biz and the two of you are in a support session and are sending pics and messages back and forth over SMS.

This is what TCR stops.

If it’s a small business, they would probably be using a real cell phone and that wouldn’t be a problem.

Why would I ever want an SMS from a business? Email is fine.

When your car is ready to be picked up from a repair. When your table is ready. When you want to schedule an appointment. When your groceries are ready to be picked up/have things missing. And so on.

When my car is ready to be picked up - they call me. Even if I just let it go to voicemail, I still get a real time transcription.

When I use Instacart, everything goes through the app where I get notified. I don’t know if Instacart has the feature. But Uber/UberEats automatically translates the text to English in the app. I live in an area where there are a lot of Spanish speaking gig workers.

Email is fine here.

I disagree. The vast majority of emails I get don't trigger a notification, as I get over a hundred non-spam emails a day. These are high priority things, so that notification coming in through a higher priority notification process makes sense.

Email isn’t instant. It is usually delayed by 30-40s, but quite often gets into the 20-30 minutes range. Hell, a few weeks ago it took 6 hours to get the login verification emails for my epic games account and couldn’t login.

Emails don’t bounce until they haven’t been able to be delivered for DAYs. With an “s,” so you won’t even know there is a delay until the message doesn’t even matter anymore.

I don't want to be online on my phone, except when I decide that I want to browse the Web because I have spare time or need some information. SMS is perfect when I want someone to reach me in a timely manner.

Well, luckily I live in country where SMS spam is not an issue. If I look at the inbox of our IoT-like devices in the US, my approach to communication might be less feasible.

>businesses abandoning SMS

Good? Stop asking me for my phone number.

Nothing in what I posted was about solicitation.

It's about years of routine communication between a business and it's own customers that stops. Like my clients who had to stop providing product support over SMS - even tho that what their customers prefer.

It's about I can't send or receive texts from my personal numbers to anyone because my MNVO carrier can't afford the cash and ceaseless headaches that TCR impose.

SMS spam continues to flow. Legit traffic is cut off unless the ransom is paid.

If you have a real business you can’t afford to get a cell phone from a major carrier?

If employees are all using softphones (like my client), purchasing cell phones for each employee adds expense and the complication of a 2nd phone number.

Expense and complexity are also the primary problems with TCR.

Well actually I know a little something about this. One of my specialties within the AWS consulting space is implementing Amazon Connect call centers solutions that involve SMS.

It takes awhile. But I’ve never had a customer complain about SMS messages going through

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/sms-nu...

And this was the original use case I was referring to

> It's about I can't send or receive texts from my personal numbers to anyone because my MNVO carrier can't afford the cash and ceaseless headaches that TCR impose

Every business demands my phone number now, some even make it the primary identifier for accounts.

Meanwhile there are zero businesses that need to send me an SMS.

> It's about I can't send or receive texts from my personal numbers to anyone

You have a mobile phone plan from which you can’t send SMS?

Subscription, not plan but yes.

Thank $DEITY. Why didn't they do this sooner?

SMS spam hasn't stopped. I still get it. What TCR stops is legit SMS traffic. SMS that is wanted - and sometimes needed - by the people who receive it.

Small biz and their own customers is who TCR stops communicating.

Big biz pays for TCR compliance and they blast out SMS like they always have.

I’m happy about this. I don’t want texts from anyone ever that isn’t a single human paying for their own personal line

i think sms should be purely left to person-to-person communication.

i hate getting business sms

> i hate getting business sms

The big mass senders can afford TCR compliance. I'm betting that's who you hate getting sms from. Well, you'll keep getting their SMS.

It's small biz who is hurt by TCR. Biz who are run by people you've met and talk to.

I do business with lots of local shops and often SMS is the best fit for us to talk to each other. Except now we can't.

That's who TCR is protecting us from.

Which big mass spammers are you thinking of? The only ones I can think of are political campaigns; scams obviously can’t be compliant at all. And even political campaigns are having to switch providers once or twice a year since they generate over 90% of spam reports and don’t actually bother with even opt-out compliance.

Any legitimate business that’s actually compliant will respect opt-outs and actually stop texting after a STOP, and I seriously doubt they would actually survive if they blasted away with unsolicited a2p texting these days.

I’d rather get an email from them. At least with email I have a multitude of spam detection and filtering tools that just don’t exist for SMS text messages.

I'm with you there. And TCR doesn't do a thing to stop that. Big corps just pay for a compliance officer and blast away.

Small biz who know their customers - this is who TCR stops.

The extreme majority of spam text messages I receive are not through email gateways. This will do nothing to reduce sms spam.

I thought that when businesses started using WhatsApp. I still think it

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