We’re sure that everyone at some point in time has received spam messages on their phones over text. These messages are annoying but the good news is that at least one major US carrier is planning to do something about it.
T-Mobile has confirmed that third-party messaging vendors who are caught sending spam messages will be hit with a fine. In a statement made to Cord Cutter News, T-Mobile was quoted as saying:
“These changes only impact third-party messaging vendors that send unlawful or unallowed commercial mass messaging campaigns for other businesses. The vendors will be fined if the content they are sending does not meet the standards in our code of conduct, which is in place to protect consumers from illegal or illicit content and aligns to federal and state laws.”
According to T-Mobile, they have broken down these messages into three different tiers with different amounts of fines. Tier 1 will see a fine of $2,000 and consists of phishing, smishing, or social engineering messages. Tier 2 consists of illegal content where the content of the message must be considered legal in all 50 states as well as federally otherwise the fine would be $1,000.
Last would be Tier 3 which has a $500 fine and consists of all other violations including but not limited to SHAFT. Hopefully these fines will deter companies from sending these types of annoying messages, and also hopefully it will encourage AT&T and Verizon to hop on board the bandwagon as well.
Source: Cord Cutter News