How many text messages have you received recently about missing delivery of a package you didn’t order? Or an award you won for being a loyal customer of a company you don’t use? Or a withdrawal that does not exist on your account?

Bogus messages like this one have skyrocketed in recent years as scammers switched from robocalls to robotexts — in part because the feds were forcing phone companies to Shutting down their networks to make automated calls. However, the legal landscape is changing in a way that makes it harder for scammers to invade your message queue as well.

It’s harder, no impossible. The scammers are a The notorious trick Package.

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a rule that requires cellphone carriers to block texts “highly likely to be illegal.” This includes texts from spoofed or non-working numbers, which spammers often rely on in their bulk messages.

The problem of automated text has grown exponentially. According to Robokiller, which makes spam-blocking technology, Americans received more than 225 billion unwanted text messages last year. Works on over 700 Every smartphone user.

The commission warned Thursday that scams are particularly dangerous, noting that humans are going through hard times no Read the texts received. In addition to promoting get-rich-quick schemes and other harassment, bot scripts can be used to trick people into revealing sensitive personal information or installing malware.

The new rules won’t go into effect for several weeks, and a follow-up batch of protections from the FCC is still awaiting public comment and a final vote. In the meantime, there are steps you can take to spare yourself the misery of hearing your phone’s text notification ring, only to find out it’s another fake FedEx notification.

The new rules

The commission applied some of the same techniques to spam scripts as it used to deter spam calls. Once the newly approved order comes into force, mobile networks will be required to create a “reasonable” list of not to create a list of numbers that will not be allowed to send text messages, similar to the list that should be kept for phone calls.

At a minimum, the “Do Not Create” text list will include numbers that are not valid or have not yet been set in North America. Individuals and organizations that spammers use their valid numbers to disguise the true source of their texts can also put their numbers on the list.

This kind of blanket approach targets a common practice among bots, which is to use different numbers (real or spoofed) to create phishing attempts or phishing attempts in succession. That’s why you can’t make much headway against spam by blocking individual numbers on your phone — texts keep coming from new unblocked numbers.

It’s also important for the FCC to require, not urge, cellphone carriers to create a list and block texts from those numbers. In its order, the commission said the shift was “partly due to the increased risks of text messaging as a nuisance and as a means of fraud”. “Data shows that consumers read almost all the texts they receive, and do so almost instantly. Indeed, industry data suggests that consumers open a much larger proportion of text messages than email, and open such messages more quickly. This contrasts with calls Where, as we have said time and time again, consumers report distrusting calls from an unfamiliar number and refusing to answer them.”

In the event that the new system interferes with valid texts, it requires mobile carriers to provide the public with a single point of contact for complaints about excessive blocking.

The goal is to stop scam scripts in the pipeline, rather than using hefty fines and wasteful enforcement action to try and deter botnets. Not that the committee has done much on the deterrence front. According to the FCC, the agency has only taken one enforcement action against spammers, Citation version in 2018 to a marketer who sent text messages to people on the federal Do Not Call register, which bans spam as well as phone calls. The recording is based on the year 1991 Consumer Protection Act over the phonewhich prohibits the use of automated calling equipment to call any residential number “without the prior express consent of the calling party”.

Two years ago the Supreme Court ruled that Much harder to enforce the lawjudgment in Facebook vs. Duguid The law prohibits robocalls only if they are made to randomly or sequentially chosen numbers. FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel told the House Oversight Subcommittee in e-mail in December.

“In light of these new legal and technical constraints, I believe the FCC will need to focus on preventing bot scripts in the first place, rather than simply trying to punish those responsible after the fact,” Rosenworcel wrote.

The last order will take effect 30 days after it is posted in the Federal Register, and it may be some time before that happens. So don’t expect mobile carriers to plug their networks with suspicious bot scripts right away.

More protection in the future?

The order adopted Thursday also proposes additional rules that would further crack down on bot scripts. One may block text messages to more than 240 million numbers in the Do Not Call history. The latter may prevent sites from tricking consumers into giving various unrelated companies permission to send them spam. And a third requires cell phone companies to block messages from senders that the FCC has identified as a source of illegal texts, just as they must do for robocallers that the commission has identified.

However, the commission did not propose a requirement that mobile phone companies authenticate the source of each text message and block those that are spoofed, as its rules require phone calls to be made. Along with blocking texts from invalid or inactive numbers, blocking scam numbers can be a huge hurdle for bots. In its arrangement, the commission said, the problem is that it’s not clear whether authentication methods that work for phone calls will work for text messages.

Instead of proposing a rule, the panel asked for comment on how a text message source authentication system might work, and how this technical solution could be applied to the bot text problem.

Another issue not explicitly addressed in the application is spam from email addresses. Mobile networks have email gateways that allow customers to exchange text messages with email addresses. So, naturally, developers offer tools that can send texts in bulk from email addresses — for free.

Already, some spammers generate phishing text messages from email addresses. If the FCC can close the door on spam sent from phone numbers, how long will it take the entire bot script industry to follow suit?

What can you do now

As noted by the FCC, many consumers have taken a heavy-handed approach to dealing with spam calls, automatically sending all calls from unknown numbers to voicemail. Legitimate callers will leave a message; Bots and scam call centers usually don’t.

If you have an Apple iPhone and use the company’s iMessage app, you can follow the same approach with text messages. In the Settings app, under Messages, you can select an option called Filter Unknown Senders. Doing so will put messages from numbers your phone doesn’t recognize in a separate list from those in your contacts.

On Android phones, Google Messages—which isn’t necessarily the default messaging app on a phone—offers a similar form of protection, but with more artificial intelligence. If you enable spam protection (under “Spam protection” in the settings menu in the app), you will use Google Analytics based on machine learning To review the texts received. If Google suspects a text is spam, it will move the message to a separate folder for spam and blocked texts, and then notify you that you received a message of sketchy origin. If it’s legitimate, you can remove the spam tag and send it to your plain text inbox.

These tools are free. Mobile carriers and app developers also offer Competition tools To block spam, some for a fee.

The most popular messaging apps also enable you to block and report numbers used by bots, but a one-by-one approach won’t stop scammers quickly going from number to number. It’s about as effective as trying to plug holes in a caulk that keeps showing new leaks.