Joint Trades Letter to FCC on Illegal Text Messages and Lead Generators

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

The American Bankers Association (ABA), ACA International, American Financial Services Association, Bank Policy Institute, Credit Union National Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions, National Council of Higher Education Resources, and Student Loan Servicing Alliance (the Associations) appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Further Notice) in the above-captioned proceeding. In the Further Notice, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) proposes to (1) require terminating mobile wireless providers to investigate and potentially block texts from a sender after they are notified by the Commission that the sender is transmitting suspected illegal texts, (2) apply the National "Do Not Call" (DNC) Registry's restrictions to text messages, and (3) restrict the ability of entities to obtain a consumer's single consent and use that consent as the basis for multiple callers to place marketing calls to the consumer.

The Associations support the Commission's efforts to combat illegal text messages. Banks, credit unions, and other financial services providers – and their customers – are negatively impacted by bad actors that increasingly send text messages that impersonate legitimate companies, with intent to defraud. Illegal text messages used to commit fraud or scams cost consumers nearly $10.1 billion in 2021. Currently, more fraudulent texts are sent—87.8 billion in 2021, up 58 percent from 2020—than fraudulent calls placed (72.2 billion in 2021). These illegal texts also lead customers to question the legitimacy of the important messages that legitimate companies send, degrading our members' ability to communicate with their customers and eroding their customers' trust.

Our members invest significant resources to protect their customers from fraudulent text messages, as well as from fraudulent e-mails and voice calls. For example, more than 2,000 banks from across the country participate in ABA's #BanksNeverAskThat anti-phishing campaign to educate customers about phishing scams and how to avoid being victimized by them.

The Associations support the Commission's efforts to identify and implement solutions to stop bad actors from sending fraudulent texts. Specifically, we support the Commission's proposal to require terminating mobile wireless providers to investigate and potentially block texts from a sender after they are on notice from the Commission that the sender is transmitting suspected illegal texts. We also urge the Commission to apply this requirement to entities that originate text messages, as these entities are best positioned to stop illegal texts from being sent in the first place.

We also urge the Commission to finalize a requirement that text messages be authenticated and set a deadline for the development and mandatory implementation of a text message authentication solution. The Commission should work with mobile wireless providers and other entities involved in the texting ecosystem to design an authentication framework that prevents bad actors from successfully sending text messages that impersonate legitimate companies, while at the same time ensuring that text messages from legitimate companies are not blocked.

Download the joint comment letter to read the full text.