<story><title>FCC threatens to disconnect Twilio for illegal robocalls</title><url>https://commsrisk.com/fcc-threatens-to-disconnect-twilio-for-illegal-robocalls/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>roywashere</author><text>I’m in Europe and hardly ever receive unsolicited SMS or phone calls. Somehow, at least to me, this seems like a US problem. Why is that? What does EU do that it is not a problem here? Or does it just mean that we have a ‘business opportunity’ here?</text></item><item><author>troydavis</author><text>Of the robocalls and text message spam that I tracked back to the originating carrier (OCN), by far the two largest source carriers were:&lt;p&gt;1. Commio and its subsidiaries Teli and thinQ (commio.com and teli.net)&lt;p&gt;2. Telnyx (telnyx.com)&lt;p&gt;If the FCC reads this comment: look into those two. In particular, both companies do a poor job of policing their resellers&amp;#x2F;affiliates. Even when a recipient is savvy enough to find the source OCN and report it to them, the spammers just move from one reseller to a different reseller of the same carrier.&lt;p&gt;Both carriers know this and look the other way, since it&amp;#x27;s cheaper than than investing more resources (content blocking, tighter velocity limits, carrier-verified opt-in) or removing the resellers who repeatably sign up spammers. Twilio was in the top 5, but as a % of their total traffic, nowhere near Commio&amp;#x2F;Teli and Telnyx.&lt;p&gt;(And if the FCC is reading this, a wish: add a &amp;quot;SPAM&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;ABUSE&amp;quot; SMS keyword that carriers are required to process. Operationally, it would behave similar to &amp;quot;STOP&amp;quot;, with a couple differences: it would be entirely processed by the carrier; the carrier would be required to respond with the name and full contact info of both the carrier and their customer; and it would give responsible carriers a way to hear about&amp;#x2F;act on abuse complaints. Right now, 10DLC spam is so hard for regular people to track that abuse mostly goes unreported.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Karellen</author><text>I think it might be because in Europe the sender pays for SMS messages, but in the US, apparently the &lt;i&gt;recipient&lt;/i&gt; pays for SMS messages (!)&lt;p&gt;AIUI, this is because in the US they don&amp;#x27;t set aside different prefixes&amp;#x2F;area codes for mobile&amp;#x2F;cell numbers, so when they were first introduced and mobile calls cost more, it was unfair to bill callers extra because they had no way of knowing they would be calling a mobile number. Therefore, they put the extra cost onto the receiver of mobile calls. With this billing expectation in place, they put the cost of SMSs onto the receiver also.&lt;p&gt;It does mean that in the US, businesses sending SMSs to individuals are supposed to go through a &amp;quot;double opt-in&amp;quot; process and have really easy opt-out procedures, on pain of the FCC having some kind of punitive actions available. But I guess they must not be working, or something.&lt;p&gt;Or my info may be out of date?</text></comment>
<story><title>FCC threatens to disconnect Twilio for illegal robocalls</title><url>https://commsrisk.com/fcc-threatens-to-disconnect-twilio-for-illegal-robocalls/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>roywashere</author><text>I’m in Europe and hardly ever receive unsolicited SMS or phone calls. Somehow, at least to me, this seems like a US problem. Why is that? What does EU do that it is not a problem here? Or does it just mean that we have a ‘business opportunity’ here?</text></item><item><author>troydavis</author><text>Of the robocalls and text message spam that I tracked back to the originating carrier (OCN), by far the two largest source carriers were:&lt;p&gt;1. Commio and its subsidiaries Teli and thinQ (commio.com and teli.net)&lt;p&gt;2. Telnyx (telnyx.com)&lt;p&gt;If the FCC reads this comment: look into those two. In particular, both companies do a poor job of policing their resellers&amp;#x2F;affiliates. Even when a recipient is savvy enough to find the source OCN and report it to them, the spammers just move from one reseller to a different reseller of the same carrier.&lt;p&gt;Both carriers know this and look the other way, since it&amp;#x27;s cheaper than than investing more resources (content blocking, tighter velocity limits, carrier-verified opt-in) or removing the resellers who repeatably sign up spammers. Twilio was in the top 5, but as a % of their total traffic, nowhere near Commio&amp;#x2F;Teli and Telnyx.&lt;p&gt;(And if the FCC is reading this, a wish: add a &amp;quot;SPAM&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;ABUSE&amp;quot; SMS keyword that carriers are required to process. Operationally, it would behave similar to &amp;quot;STOP&amp;quot;, with a couple differences: it would be entirely processed by the carrier; the carrier would be required to respond with the name and full contact info of both the carrier and their customer; and it would give responsible carriers a way to hear about&amp;#x2F;act on abuse complaints. Right now, 10DLC spam is so hard for regular people to track that abuse mostly goes unreported.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scooke</author><text>I was a micro-entrepeneur, or auto-entrepeneur, in France, and unsolicited calls and messages started the very next day I registered. Don&amp;#x27;t ask me the about the email spam.</text></comment>