I received this information from Bandwidth 2 days ago:
https://support.bandwidth.com/hc/en-us/articles/19939626519575-New-non-compliance-fees-on-January-1 T-Mobile is stating that starting January 1, 2024, they will be fining carriers for every SMS that violates these three tiers of unwanted messaging: Tier 1: $2,000, for phishing, smishing, and social engineering Social Engineering refers to the practice of targeting individuals in a way that manipulates individuals to reveal private information like credit card numbers, or social security numbers. Tier 2: $1,000, for illegal content (included content must be legal in all 50 states and federally) Illegal content includes, but is not limited to, Cannabis, Marijuana, CBD, Illegal Prescriptions, and Solicitation. Tier 3: $500, for all other violations including, but not limited to, SHAFT Please review the T-Mobile Code of Conduct Section 5.2 for a list of all disallowed contact My first thought is How the heck are we going to, in an automated fashion, detect and prevent the sending of this type of content? My second thought is This opens up carriers to monitoring Section 230 protected telecommunications, and potential legal action against them by their customers as they attempt to avoid T-Mobile fines. But T-Mobile isn't the US Government, so they can pretty much do whatever they want here. But to try to comply with T-Mobile's demands, it puts carriers into a potential legal gray area because now they scan and block the content of messages. I get it, we all hate spam and the mis-use of SMS and Phone Calls. And yes, I'm happy that there are independent carriers that are pushing harder to do so. But this seems like the very wrong way to go about it. I don't mind them fining a carrier after they bring the issue to their attention and they do not act within a reasonable amount of time (3 business days). But a Social Engineering attack, that really isn't something you can tell from a single message. T-Mobile is saying that if all carriers sending SMS messages to their customers do not scan an entire conversation and then somehow detect that the conversation turns into a phishing attempt, that they will charge that carrier $2,000? I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts here. And what plans are being made to handle this unreasonable demand by T-Mobile. Beckman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy [email protected] https://www.angryox.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
