No messaging programs can run on the T-Mobile that may promote unlawful, unapproved, or illicit content,
including but not limited to:
• SPAM;
• Fraudulent or misleading messages;
• Depictions or endorsements of violence;
• Inappropriate content;
• Profanity or hate speech;
• Endorsement of illegal drugs
> The non-compliance fine(s) (USD) will be assessed for every Sev-0 violation issued as follows:
> 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 content
Section 5.2 mentions, a.o, gambling, payday loans and work from home programs. The code of conduct also discusses opt out, that high opt-out rates will warrant investigation, etc
This is limited to customers using their “bandwidth” service for sending messages en mass. So, I think this is a good change.
(If it weren’t, it would be very bad, as it would mean discussing where one can get an abortion can cost you $1000, because that isn’t legal in all 50 states)
They also don’t mention how they will enforce those rules. Will they read all messages sent through that service?
This is just like FAANG where they forget to include a major player like Microsoft. (Maybe it was legacy before Satya, but Azure and AI have brought it back to the front.)
Us this is what I remember as well, FAANG was just short for a collection of specific stocks that performed well...and by that I mean that were regularly hyped and pumped regardless of normal indicators like profit.
Amazon was fine on a resume, not quite as prestigious as Google/Apple/Facebook or perhaps Microsoft but it has had pull for the better part of a decade around here.
Microsoft paid more than Amazon for a long time (amazon only recently hit parity with the other FAANGs), and had FAR better wlb and work culture. Boutique MS (Linkedin) was known for paying extremely good while giving little work. Truly the ideal "rest-and-vest" companies.
I say we throw Amazon out and replace it with Microsoft. We could also throw netflix out, since they're doing pretty bad these days
Well Jim Cramer was the one who originally popularized the term FAANG (then FANG)[1], and has since changed the it to MAMAA, which includes Microsoft (and the name change from Facebook to Meta, and Google to Alphabet)[2].
Also Netflix got excluded in the new one because "the digital streaming pioneer’s market capitalization has not kept up with the others."
This actually makes sense. Alcohol regulation is extremely complex due to the prohibition era. I imagine it's a nightmare to try to legally advertise alcohol over a interstate medium like SMS.
This regulational complexity is the same reason why major shippers (FedEx, UPS) generally don't ship alcohol without a special agreement. Spirits, wine, and beer can all be different, by state and even by county. This is why there are special alcohol distributors that specifically deliver and stock alcohol.
So absolutely nothing of any value and just a bunch of made up bullshit designed to target people based on their race, religion, sexuality and gender because you’re an ignorant and insecure dipshit who is too scared to attach their own name to it?
I think T-Mobile not allowing you to spam this nonsense to people is something everyone is ok with.
Really it’s a very specific kind of moron who will absolutely insist that the real secrets in life are all predicated around people who have a different skin color or religion are the real problem and will then quote evidence to you that doesn’t hold up to even the most gentle scrutiny all while they insist that they are the smartest person in the room.
Since my original reply got [flagged] let me rephrase:
>So absolutely nothing of any value and just a bunch of made up bullshit designed to target people based on their race, religion, sexuality and gender because you’re an ignorant and insecure dipshit who is too scared to attach their own name to it?
Translation: "So uncomfortable narrative shattering facts designed to tell the unadulterated truth are heretical so I'd rather pretend like they don't have any value, use ad hominem, and Gestapo-level tactics to quell social opponents and heretics."
Just because certain truths and facts are uncomfortable doesn't mean the aforementioned quotes are "made up bullshit" nor "hate speech." They are facts. Uncomfortable, narrative shattering heretical facts, but facts nonetheless.
>I think T-Mobile not allowing you to spam this nonsense to people is something everyone is ok with.
You may be too young to remember, but this is the exact line of reasoning conservatives used in the 90s to pressure companies to not support LGBTQ, atheism, foul language in music, etc.
>Really it’s a very specific kind of moron who will absolutely insist that the real secrets in life are all predicated around people who have a different skin color or religion are the real problem and will then quote evidence to you that doesn’t hold up to even the most gentle scrutiny all while they insist that they are the smartest person in the room.
You legitimately could be talking about SJW/the woke and everything you said applies.
Thanks for highlighting exactly what people actually mean when they initially try to talk about it with vague accusations of “most things classified as hate speech are actually harmless and they are just things that the overlords don’t like” and doing so in the exact manner I had said you would, complete with sock puppet accounts along the way.
>Thanks for highlighting exactly what people actually mean when they initially try to talk about it with vague accusations of “most things classified as hate speech are actually harmless
Glad to be of assistance. Just because you feel objectively true narrative shattering facts are harmful doesn't mean they are. Not everyone is as thin-skinned, weak, and intolerant as you.
>doing so in the exact manner I had said you would
What exact manner, stating uncomfortable narrative shattering facts that overlords don't want anyone to see? I agree! I stated uncomfortable truth, facts, and reality that must be banned by those steeped in wokeism.
>complete with sock puppet accounts along the way.
None of those other posters are me. Hilarious how anyone who disagrees with you must be using sock puppets. It's a delusional take, which isn't surprising coming from someone who thinks men can get pregnant.
Are you actually retarded? Everything, and I mean everything he said was correct. Men cannot get pregnant, if you truly think they can, then please just jump off a bridge. People like you are truly corrupting our country into thinking that these VERY REAL problems shouldn’t be talked about
But these are all either objectively true statements or reasonable political viewpoints. Why should there be serious adverse consequences for stating any of this?
Let me rephrase since my original reply got [flagged].
>So...transphobia
Stating biological facts and reality doesn't mean something that shatters the narrative is "transphobic". Men (male humans) cannot get pregnant.
>Islamophobia
Being against a religion that stones "adulterous" rape victims, executes gays by throwing them off the roof, and beheads those who dare insult their religion isn't a phobia of any kind, it's common sense.
>anti-black racism
Objective sociological facts are not racism.
>In other words, you just want to be able to be every kind of bigot and never suffer consequences for it.
Translation: "These are uncomfortable narrative shattering facts designed to tell the unadulterated truth that are heretical, so I'd rather pretend like they don't have any value, use fascism, ad hominem, and Gestapo-level tactics to quell social opponents and heretics."
The Illegal content part seems highly problematic given how states are fracturing - now the most extreme state dictates how T-Mobile operates nationwide? That sounds bad.
Are there application for Android and iPhone that do E2EE for SMS in the way that OTR does it for IRC and a few other apps? Meaning people don't depend on a server to create/manage keys, its person-to-person and pre-shared secrets could be shared out of band such as pointing the camera to the other persons phone screen or USB or external storage. Google already reads all my text messages, as they do for most people on Android.
I personally would never use the popular platforms like Signal, WhatsApp, etc for my own fundamental and philosophical beliefs but I am probably alone in not trusting them.
This is for mass sending SMS messages onto the T-Mobile network, particularly with what’s called A2P 10DLC. Essentially, sending automated and transactional messages that come from full length phone numbers. Over the past few years T-Mobile specifically and the industry generally have continually worked on tightening restrictions on these. As it stands now, to work with a business like Bandwidth in order to send these kinds of messages, you have to verify your business, and then verify and justify each messaging campaign.
If end users start reporting too many messages that are sent from these numbers as spam, a human will eventually review the reported messages and their campaigns. The most likely way the fine itself will work is that T-Mobile charges Bandwidth (or whomever you’re routing messages through), and they pass on the fine to you.
This thread may need an updated title to clarify that this is regarding their mass messaging service. Still wild about it being the lowest common denominator of state laws.
Isn't it weird / dangerous that the service provider polices and fines its customers, and not the police? The lack of separation of concerns seems strange, I would also expect that such rules should be laws built from whatever regular system coming from the country, which is hopefully, at least theoretically, democratic?
Wouldn't really call it dangerous, ISPs have always cut off people from service doing illegal/unethical things. The weird part is that they're putting a price on it now... implying that it's OK to use their pipe to engage in crime and do morally dubious stuff like swindle old people out of their money as long as they get a cut too.
No? They are managing the relationship they have with their consumer customers by enforcing a code of content for commercial customers that communicate with them.
I guess there is an argument that the service should be a utility, but I don't think there are currently laws that would force them to carry messages that they expect to be a net harm to their business.
So they’re going to fine people with viruses? That’s probably a good thing overall, but will there be a warning first? What if someone just refuses to pay? then switches providers?
This is for bulk senders. I imagine it's hard to negotiate a new contract with a different provider on short notice, especially if your reason for leaving is "ahh, we got fined too much for sending unwanted messages".
A company that refuses to divulge contact information for a company that sent me an unsolicited, unidentified text message (a clear violation of TCPA). Which is really funny... shouldn't this company want me to get in touch with them if I'm interested?
I guess I'm a bit confused about your expectations here. Would you expect your ISP to give up your contact info in regards to a DMCA complaint? I certainly wouldn't; I would expect them to do exactly what they (and bandwidth.com) actually do: alert the user that they received a complaint and/or take action against the user themselves.
Once upon a time it was a possible for a prank call to be traced and the child spanked.
What is more important is that I provided source and destination numbers alongside times and screenshots of their customer violating the law and the response was a 'durrr, ok'.
These providers launder sms and voip spam. I've worked with providers that care about compliance and know when someone DNGAF.
T-Mobile isn’t technically a legal system so this is referring to them fining for illegal content of their own accord as part of the contractual arrangement. It’s not as if they impanel a jury :)
You can't be fined by a private company. They can include provisions in a contract that may lead to increased costs but this is something you would agree to beforehand.
Well, under the restatement (and case law in some states) a liquidated damages provision cannot represent a penalty. Instead, it has to represent an estimate of actual damages in breach, more or less.
Absent the actual language in the Agreement between T-Mobile and the intermediary providers like bandwidth.com, we have no idea what the penalty is called - bandwidth.com is calling it a “fine” but we don’t really know.
My real name is in my profile; Try filing a police report saying that I engaged in "phishing, smishing, and social engineering". I think you'll find that nothing happens. I can give you some fake evidence if you wanna be extra convincing, but your report will still end up in the junk pile along with the rest
What makes you think they’re not reporting stuff to cops? These are fines sent to message aggregators and gateways. Providers like Twilio who have thousands of different customers, and provide a simple on ramp to sending SMS into mobile network infrastructure.
Terminating those relationships after a single violation would simple result in the eradication of all SMS sending services, except physical mobiles phones.
Im only basing that on the language used on the page, which says only multiple violations may get you blocked.
Perhaps I'm just confused about who is using it, and for what; I was under the impression this was for bulk mailing. But either way the whole industry has an abuse problem thats not really being taken seriously, as $2000 is barely a slap on the wrist -- what is a company's incentive to keep their platform clean with such a paltry fine?
But maybe the SMS on ramp shouldn't be so simple? These are businesses and they have undoubtedly calculated the risk of easy onboarding vs scammers getting through
These don’t need to be hugely punitive, just shift the economics enough to make doing the right thing less costly than the wrong thing.
What do you think the average revenue per customer is at Bandwidth or Twilio? A couple thousand dollars in fines for a violation should be plenty of incentive to screen their customers better.
If they start charging them $500k for a violation or something, these senders would just drop them entirely. Sure, you’d get rid of the junk… and everything else too.
> Terminating those relationships after a single violation would simple result in the eradication of all SMS sending services, except physical mobiles phones.
Might not be a bad thing... it would stop a lot of spam and stop companies from using SMS for 2FA
It's much more likely that T-Mobile sends a fine to Bandwidth (who then just forwards it to the customer). T-Mobile can't just terminate business with Bandwidth along with all of their genuine customers, so a fine encourages them to implement measures themselves.
US contract law generally doesn't support "fines" under private contracts. You might justify it as liquidated damages, but here T-Mobile expressly used improper punitive terminology, and didn't require customers to expressly accept these particular provisions either.
The revision looks like a mistake by T-Mobile, or else a calculated risk that a class actions somewhow are unavailable and anyone they "fine" will accept it to avoid drawing law enforcement attention.
The actual verbiage provided by T-Mobile isn’t provided here, so we don’t know what the language is. The word “fine” might merely be a characterization made by bandwidth.com.
I wonder if phishing simulations are allowed. There's nothing explicit in the code of conduct (at least none that I could find with a quick search). Smishing sims are a great way to train staff on phishing, and disallowing them would be somewhat antithetical to their explicit mission here of protecting they users.
Does it really make anyone safer? I’d think that time would be better spent deploying WebAuthn so phishing is impossible, and working vendors to reduce the number of legitimate messages which are indistinguishable from phishing.
At least for the company I work for, to maintain our insurance, we had to be enrolled in a service (KnowBe4) that does nothing but:
1) produce shitty AI voiceover "please don't click email links" videos
2) randomly email, text, etc us with fake stuff trying to get you to click the links.
I always report the emails as phishing to Google just hoping one day something gets flagged somewhere on Google's side, but I doubt it will ever happen.
No one is making you use Knowbe4. As someone that founded a company in this space, the amount of people that hate SAT and Phishing sims purely based on their experience with certain companies is tremendous.
What I meant "we had to be enrolled in a service" in the "any company that provides this service" and was just giving the current company as an example.
Training and simulations absolutely do reduce the likelihood of an event.
Most companies don't use these tools correctly, and certainly the technical audience here on HN will despise them. But phishing simulations can reduce your risk.
Is there any solid research published on that? The anecdotal evidence I’ve heard from people at pretty large companies was that it only helped with a modest reduction the lowest-skill phishing, whereas actually securing their systems had far more impact.
This industry is ridiculous. One week's notice about new fines, provided the day before the Christmas holiday? This after the last couple of years of constantly changing requirements for registration of traffic.
Meanwhile many of our customers legally sell CBD products. But if one backwards state disallows the content, we could get fined? If one state bans, say, talking about abortion, and our customers in unrelated states discuss it, we can get fined? Since this is already the case, anything health related basically can't use sms on tmobile. And almost no business can safely use sms: we can't track every law in every state.
T-Mobiles code-of-conduct, which provides the basis for these fines, dates from November 2020. All that’s changing here is that their code-of-conduct now has more teeth. I would expect that reputable communications provider using T-Mobile already knows if they’re violating the code-of-conduct in a material way because they will have received violation notices in the past.
If you’ve been ignoring those notices, and you’re now going to start getting fines, that’s kinda on you. The rules have existed for years, now they greater consequences if you break them.
We are not directly a tmobile customer. We use Twilio. Our relationship with Tmobile is mediated by them. But ultimately we are a customer, and this is not how you treat customers.
We operate numbers for thousands of of businesses. They sell cbd products as some tiny percentage of their business (hell, you can get cbd at convenience stores now). We can ban the word cbd, but we can't stop evasion. And the carriers are not cooperative about sharing techniques for detecting illegal content.
And again, the verbiage saying we can't send content that is illegal in a single state has never been communicated before. As I just stated, the abortion example makes it clear that this is a big problem. It is an unreasonably broad restriction.
These fines are excessive in any case.
What I'm going to recommend to my company is dropping all our tmobile numbers and to stop sending to tmobile customers, while we continue to explore non-sms alternatives for direct messaging.
Have you read the Twilio Acceptable Use Policy[1]?
> Prohibited Activities. Do not use the Services to engage in or encourage any activity that is illegal, deceptive, harmful, a violation of others’ rights, or harmful to Twilio’s business operations or reputation
I mean sending messages about selling CBD products could easily fall under the “encouraging and activity that is illegal”. CBD at the federal level is mostly illegal, depending on exactly how the product was created. The U.S. cannabis industry sits a weird legal gray area. Why are you surprised that large communication firm that operate in every state don’t want to get involved in that business, and the legal mess it comes with.
Get upset with T-Mobile for passing on the costs of that legal risk is foolish. They’re just doing the smart thing. If you’re in the cannabis industry, and you’ve done your due dil, then your business should be prepared for these types of events, because it comes with the territory.
Sending CBD messages are explicitly forbidden, not necessarily due to actual illegality, but due to SHAFT compliance. CBD derived from hemp is federally legal. Messaging about it can be illegal depending on claims made. I'm not really complaining about that, although the short timeline for new, exorbitant fines is ridiculous. We do not have a relationship with any entity other than the government itself that "fines" us. This is not normal behavior for a business relationship. We do not need to discuss cbd/canibus anymore, although you are welcome to continue arguing for your position that a business can fine their customers anytime they want with effectively no notice to the change in their agreement.
The important change is that the new language prohibits anything that could be illegal in any state, regardless of whether the message originates or terminates in that state. I already gave you the example of abortion - you continue to ignore this example. Several states now ban emergency care for pregnant women that could result in the termination of a pregnancy. But now a California doctor can't message "Your appointment for termination is ready." or "This is a reminder to take pill #2." to a California patient because Texas has passed the Christian equivalent of Sharia law. How many other laws are there that could violate laws in individual states that we don't know about? Sodomy is still on the books as illegal in many states, as are many other laws that exist but are effectively unconstitutional. This app to person messaging can be for individual use as well - a user can send personal messages via a web or app based sms service.
The carriers are doing too much. They are prohibiting legal traffic. And at some point, like me, you have to fight for your customers, or you'll get disrupted. I'm extremely motivated to disrupt this industry at this point, or at the very least push the average American towards services like Whatsapp. Third party messaging apps like whatsapp are extremely popular outside of the US (used far more than SMS) and the ability to send encrypted messages without carrier interference is a big benefit.
> We do not have a relationship with any entity other than the government itself that "fines" us. This is not normal behavior for a business relationship.
That’s where I’m gonna have to disagree with you. They might not be common when a business is offering a fairly commodity product like SMS messaging. But they certainly appear in business contracts all the time. You must be familiar with the concept of a chargeback, and fees/fines business are slap with when chargebacks occurred. I can also tell you that in contracts between payment networks (Mastercard, Visa etc) and issuers/acquirers (banks, stripe etc) there’s a hundreds of rules, and associated fines/fees for non-compliance.
I’ve personally never seen a meaningful contract between two businesses that didn’t include clear expectations of performance, and monetary consequences for failure to perform. It’s a perfectly normal way for businesses to incentivise their partners to uphold their end of the deal, without having to endlessly resort to the courts for redress.
> The important change is that the new language prohibits anything that could be illegal in any state, regardless of whether the message originates or terminates in that state.
It’s not new language, the November 2020 copy of T-Mobile code-of-conduct contains the language, include the explicit requirement that content must be legal in all states.
> I already gave you the example of abortion - you continue to ignore this example. Several states now ban emergency care for pregnant women that could result in the termination of a pregnancy.
Utterly irrelevant. It’s not T-Mobile job to decide which states laws are morally acceptable to ignore, nor is it reasonable for you to expect them to take on that legal liability on your behalf.
Also none of this impacts you anyway. Your relationship is with Twilio, these changes impact Twilio only. Twilio can make their own decisions about how they want to handle the costs and risks, which may include passing on the fees/fines onto their customers, or it may not.
> The carriers are doing too much. They are prohibiting legal traffic.
Welcome to real world. Carriers are allowed to prohibit anything they want, in the U.S., that’s protected by the first amendment. Everything you’re complaining about has been true for years, you just haven’t done your research before. Realistically these changes are a complete nothing burger, carriers aren’t interested in actual scanning messages etc, they’re just looking for a fig leaf to demonstrate they’re doing something about the scrounge of SMS spam and phishing.
You know what a breach of contract is right? That’s basically what civil court exist to adjudicate, and why bailiffs exist.
As long as the contract isn’t judged as being unfair (which is very unlikely), then yeah a court will uphold it, and court bailiff will confiscate property to see the fine paid.
That’s not accurate. I mean yeah you qualified this by saying it could be unfair but generally speaking this is not right. Bailiffs won’t be seizing your property unless there’s some sort of specific consideration (like a specific unique item that is owed), damages owed (determined by a court), or a belief that the consideration for the payment is already there, which is pretty clearly false for a fine.
I think we’re getting hung up on the word fine where. Obviously T-Mobile have no right to “fine” individuals in the same way the government can. But they do have the right to include provisions for monetary consequences for violations of their code-of-conduct into their business agreements. And T-Mobiles customers (I.e. people like Bandwidth), can add provisions to pass those monetary consequences onto their customers in their contracts.
Those contract provisions will create a consideration for payment between T-Mobile and their business partner, if their partner breaches the code-of-conduct, and a court will absolutely enforce those provisions. Eventually a court appointed bailiff will be instructed to recover the debt via the confiscation of assets, whether those assets are cash or other property will be entirely down to the solvency of the business the debt is being recovered from.
No, they cannot. This won’t fly. There is no consideration and no damages. It’s not a legal contract. A company can voluntarily agree to these rules. But they cannot be forced into them. It would be different if T Mobile was suffering as a result of these incidences.
A court can ultimately do whatever the fuck it wants, sure, but one would expect it not to work.
> No, they cannot. This won’t fly. There is no consideration and no damages. It’s not a legal contract.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that gateway providers like Bandwidth don’t all have contracts with T-Mobile which provisions for fines etc in them. I can guarantee you they do, there is zero chance that you can connect to T-Mobile network without entering into an air tight contract with them, which includes clauses to allow T-Mobile to unilaterally bill you for violations of the code-of-conduct.
How on earth are T-Mobile meant to provide any kind of service to gateways if they can’t write contracts with usage billing, and punitive clauses for bad behaviour, which courts will uphold. You’re basically suggesting that T-Mobile aren’t allowed to dictate how gateways use T-Mobile network, they either have to allow people to abuse their network, or simple not allow people to use their network. Which is patently ridiculous.
Highly unlikely they’d ever bother to go to court. In practice, this is a method of getting rid of spammers; the spammer will just leave a permanent negative balance, I’d expect.
The spammer will leave a permanent negative balance, which will leave bandwidth and other providers out that money with little chance of recouping it from the scammers who will just abandon the account and start a new one...
1. They apply to only to messaging gateways for sending mass messaging campaigns, not consumers.
2. This is part of a long running industry process (since at least 2020) for reducing the abuse of SMS messaging in U.S. for the purposes of spam and phishing.
3. T-Mobiles “Code of Conduct” has existed since November 2020.
4. These new fines are just the latest set of fines for abusing messaging services. Since 2020 a number of fines have been introduced, but they’ve focused initially on simple technical violations (sending mass messages without properly registering your source number, or properly registering your campaign).
5. Reading around, it seems industry players are expecting these violations to be detected via customer complaints, rather than actual scanning messages. It seems the networks don’t have the infrastructure or the interest is mass scanning messages. But if they see unusual levels of complaints from customers, associated with a specific gateway or campaign, then they’ll manually review customer complaints, associated messages and issue the appropriate fines to originating gateway.
TL;DR if you’re not mass sending SMS via A2P (application to person) platforms, this has zero impact on. Except you should start getting less spam.
> Reading around, it seems industry players are expecting these violations to be detected via customer complaints, rather than actual scanning messages.
Having worked with quite a few telcos, I’m not surprised. Most of them struggle enough keeping their Lawful Intercept systems running properly (most people would probably be surprised to know how often wiretaps are messed up by service providers). I can’t imagine they’re especially eager to start running content analysis on their SMS traffic.
These rules apply to resellers of T-Mobile's network, not T-Mobile cellphone customers (it may apply to them also, but it would be a PR disaster trying to apply it)
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 73.1 ms ] thread5.1 Unlawful, Unapproved, or Illicit Content
No messaging programs can run on the T-Mobile that may promote unlawful, unapproved, or illicit content, including but not limited to:
• SPAM; • Fraudulent or misleading messages; • Depictions or endorsements of violence; • Inappropriate content; • Profanity or hate speech; • Endorsement of illegal drugs
Though I imagine T-Mobile probably doesn't care if you keep paying and customers don't complain.
> 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 content
Section 5.2 mentions, a.o, gambling, payday loans and work from home programs. The code of conduct also discusses opt out, that high opt-out rates will warrant investigation, etc
This is limited to customers using their “bandwidth” service for sending messages en mass. So, I think this is a good change.
(If it weren’t, it would be very bad, as it would mean discussing where one can get an abortion can cost you $1000, because that isn’t legal in all 50 states)
They also don’t mention how they will enforce those rules. Will they read all messages sent through that service?
S: Secually inappropriate content
H: Hate speech or profanity
A: Alcohol
F: Firearms, and depictions or endorsements of violence
T: Tobacco (including vaping), or endorsement of illegal or illicit drugs, including marijuana and cannabis
In addition to the above, the promotion of gambling is not allowed.
https://www.10dlc.org/en/shaft
Edit: Actually the 10dlc.org T-Mobile code-of-conduct links to a 2020 pdf. Somebody should probably tell 'em. =)
Microsoft is doing better now, but it's employment conditions aren't the same as FAANG (and no where near the luxuries of when it was coined).
Amazon didn't look that good on a resume and "we're going to fire you the instant you underperform" Netflix wasn't that great a working environment.
I say we throw Amazon out and replace it with Microsoft. We could also throw netflix out, since they're doing pretty bad these days
Also Netflix got excluded in the new one because "the digital streaming pioneer’s market capitalization has not kept up with the others."
[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp [2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/29/cramer-new-acronym-to-replac...
So like, if you send a text with a swear word they will fine you?
This regulational complexity is the same reason why major shippers (FedEx, UPS) generally don't ship alcohol without a special agreement. Spirits, wine, and beer can all be different, by state and even by county. This is why there are special alcohol distributors that specifically deliver and stock alcohol.
Would be a million times more of a productive conversation rather than the vague accusations you’re tossing around about “overlords”.
Right now you are just posting a non falsifiable argument and presenting it as though it was a fact.
I think T-Mobile not allowing you to spam this nonsense to people is something everyone is ok with.
Really it’s a very specific kind of moron who will absolutely insist that the real secrets in life are all predicated around people who have a different skin color or religion are the real problem and will then quote evidence to you that doesn’t hold up to even the most gentle scrutiny all while they insist that they are the smartest person in the room.
>So absolutely nothing of any value and just a bunch of made up bullshit designed to target people based on their race, religion, sexuality and gender because you’re an ignorant and insecure dipshit who is too scared to attach their own name to it?
Translation: "So uncomfortable narrative shattering facts designed to tell the unadulterated truth are heretical so I'd rather pretend like they don't have any value, use ad hominem, and Gestapo-level tactics to quell social opponents and heretics."
Just because certain truths and facts are uncomfortable doesn't mean the aforementioned quotes are "made up bullshit" nor "hate speech." They are facts. Uncomfortable, narrative shattering heretical facts, but facts nonetheless.
>I think T-Mobile not allowing you to spam this nonsense to people is something everyone is ok with.
You may be too young to remember, but this is the exact line of reasoning conservatives used in the 90s to pressure companies to not support LGBTQ, atheism, foul language in music, etc.
>Really it’s a very specific kind of moron who will absolutely insist that the real secrets in life are all predicated around people who have a different skin color or religion are the real problem and will then quote evidence to you that doesn’t hold up to even the most gentle scrutiny all while they insist that they are the smartest person in the room.
You legitimately could be talking about SJW/the woke and everything you said applies.
Glad to be of assistance. Just because you feel objectively true narrative shattering facts are harmful doesn't mean they are. Not everyone is as thin-skinned, weak, and intolerant as you.
>doing so in the exact manner I had said you would
What exact manner, stating uncomfortable narrative shattering facts that overlords don't want anyone to see? I agree! I stated uncomfortable truth, facts, and reality that must be banned by those steeped in wokeism.
>complete with sock puppet accounts along the way.
None of those other posters are me. Hilarious how anyone who disagrees with you must be using sock puppets. It's a delusional take, which isn't surprising coming from someone who thinks men can get pregnant.
In other words, you just want to be able to be every kind of bigot and never suffer consequences for it.
>So...transphobia
Stating biological facts and reality doesn't mean something that shatters the narrative is "transphobic". Men (male humans) cannot get pregnant.
>Islamophobia
Being against a religion that stones "adulterous" rape victims, executes gays by throwing them off the roof, and beheads those who dare insult their religion isn't a phobia of any kind, it's common sense.
>anti-black racism
Objective sociological facts are not racism.
>In other words, you just want to be able to be every kind of bigot and never suffer consequences for it.
Translation: "These are uncomfortable narrative shattering facts designed to tell the unadulterated truth that are heretical, so I'd rather pretend like they don't have any value, use fascism, ad hominem, and Gestapo-level tactics to quell social opponents and heretics."
I personally would never use the popular platforms like Signal, WhatsApp, etc for my own fundamental and philosophical beliefs but I am probably alone in not trusting them.
If end users start reporting too many messages that are sent from these numbers as spam, a human will eventually review the reported messages and their campaigns. The most likely way the fine itself will work is that T-Mobile charges Bandwidth (or whomever you’re routing messages through), and they pass on the fine to you.
Edit: typo
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=180117
I guess there is an argument that the service should be a utility, but I don't think there are currently laws that would force them to carry messages that they expect to be a net harm to their business.
A company that refuses to divulge contact information for a company that sent me an unsolicited, unidentified text message (a clear violation of TCPA). Which is really funny... shouldn't this company want me to get in touch with them if I'm interested?
What is more important is that I provided source and destination numbers alongside times and screenshots of their customer violating the law and the response was a 'durrr, ok'.
These providers launder sms and voip spam. I've worked with providers that care about compliance and know when someone DNGAF.
strange legal system you got there
My real name is in my profile; Try filing a police report saying that I engaged in "phishing, smishing, and social engineering". I think you'll find that nothing happens. I can give you some fake evidence if you wanna be extra convincing, but your report will still end up in the junk pile along with the rest
Terminating those relationships after a single violation would simple result in the eradication of all SMS sending services, except physical mobiles phones.
Perhaps I'm just confused about who is using it, and for what; I was under the impression this was for bulk mailing. But either way the whole industry has an abuse problem thats not really being taken seriously, as $2000 is barely a slap on the wrist -- what is a company's incentive to keep their platform clean with such a paltry fine?
But maybe the SMS on ramp shouldn't be so simple? These are businesses and they have undoubtedly calculated the risk of easy onboarding vs scammers getting through
What do you think the average revenue per customer is at Bandwidth or Twilio? A couple thousand dollars in fines for a violation should be plenty of incentive to screen their customers better.
If they start charging them $500k for a violation or something, these senders would just drop them entirely. Sure, you’d get rid of the junk… and everything else too.
Might not be a bad thing... it would stop a lot of spam and stop companies from using SMS for 2FA
The revision looks like a mistake by T-Mobile, or else a calculated risk that a class actions somewhow are unavailable and anyone they "fine" will accept it to avoid drawing law enforcement attention.
1) produce shitty AI voiceover "please don't click email links" videos
2) randomly email, text, etc us with fake stuff trying to get you to click the links.
I always report the emails as phishing to Google just hoping one day something gets flagged somewhere on Google's side, but I doubt it will ever happen.
My company is, but that's me being pedantic.
What I meant "we had to be enrolled in a service" in the "any company that provides this service" and was just giving the current company as an example.
Most companies don't use these tools correctly, and certainly the technical audience here on HN will despise them. But phishing simulations can reduce your risk.
Meanwhile many of our customers legally sell CBD products. But if one backwards state disallows the content, we could get fined? If one state bans, say, talking about abortion, and our customers in unrelated states discuss it, we can get fined? Since this is already the case, anything health related basically can't use sms on tmobile. And almost no business can safely use sms: we can't track every law in every state.
If you’ve been ignoring those notices, and you’re now going to start getting fines, that’s kinda on you. The rules have existed for years, now they greater consequences if you break them.
We operate numbers for thousands of of businesses. They sell cbd products as some tiny percentage of their business (hell, you can get cbd at convenience stores now). We can ban the word cbd, but we can't stop evasion. And the carriers are not cooperative about sharing techniques for detecting illegal content.
And again, the verbiage saying we can't send content that is illegal in a single state has never been communicated before. As I just stated, the abortion example makes it clear that this is a big problem. It is an unreasonably broad restriction.
These fines are excessive in any case.
What I'm going to recommend to my company is dropping all our tmobile numbers and to stop sending to tmobile customers, while we continue to explore non-sms alternatives for direct messaging.
> Prohibited Activities. Do not use the Services to engage in or encourage any activity that is illegal, deceptive, harmful, a violation of others’ rights, or harmful to Twilio’s business operations or reputation
I mean sending messages about selling CBD products could easily fall under the “encouraging and activity that is illegal”. CBD at the federal level is mostly illegal, depending on exactly how the product was created. The U.S. cannabis industry sits a weird legal gray area. Why are you surprised that large communication firm that operate in every state don’t want to get involved in that business, and the legal mess it comes with.
Get upset with T-Mobile for passing on the costs of that legal risk is foolish. They’re just doing the smart thing. If you’re in the cannabis industry, and you’ve done your due dil, then your business should be prepared for these types of events, because it comes with the territory.
[1] https://www.twilio.com/en-us/legal/aup
The important change is that the new language prohibits anything that could be illegal in any state, regardless of whether the message originates or terminates in that state. I already gave you the example of abortion - you continue to ignore this example. Several states now ban emergency care for pregnant women that could result in the termination of a pregnancy. But now a California doctor can't message "Your appointment for termination is ready." or "This is a reminder to take pill #2." to a California patient because Texas has passed the Christian equivalent of Sharia law. How many other laws are there that could violate laws in individual states that we don't know about? Sodomy is still on the books as illegal in many states, as are many other laws that exist but are effectively unconstitutional. This app to person messaging can be for individual use as well - a user can send personal messages via a web or app based sms service.
The carriers are doing too much. They are prohibiting legal traffic. And at some point, like me, you have to fight for your customers, or you'll get disrupted. I'm extremely motivated to disrupt this industry at this point, or at the very least push the average American towards services like Whatsapp. Third party messaging apps like whatsapp are extremely popular outside of the US (used far more than SMS) and the ability to send encrypted messages without carrier interference is a big benefit.
That’s where I’m gonna have to disagree with you. They might not be common when a business is offering a fairly commodity product like SMS messaging. But they certainly appear in business contracts all the time. You must be familiar with the concept of a chargeback, and fees/fines business are slap with when chargebacks occurred. I can also tell you that in contracts between payment networks (Mastercard, Visa etc) and issuers/acquirers (banks, stripe etc) there’s a hundreds of rules, and associated fines/fees for non-compliance.
I’ve personally never seen a meaningful contract between two businesses that didn’t include clear expectations of performance, and monetary consequences for failure to perform. It’s a perfectly normal way for businesses to incentivise their partners to uphold their end of the deal, without having to endlessly resort to the courts for redress.
> The important change is that the new language prohibits anything that could be illegal in any state, regardless of whether the message originates or terminates in that state.
It’s not new language, the November 2020 copy of T-Mobile code-of-conduct contains the language, include the explicit requirement that content must be legal in all states.
> I already gave you the example of abortion - you continue to ignore this example. Several states now ban emergency care for pregnant women that could result in the termination of a pregnancy.
Utterly irrelevant. It’s not T-Mobile job to decide which states laws are morally acceptable to ignore, nor is it reasonable for you to expect them to take on that legal liability on your behalf.
Also none of this impacts you anyway. Your relationship is with Twilio, these changes impact Twilio only. Twilio can make their own decisions about how they want to handle the costs and risks, which may include passing on the fees/fines onto their customers, or it may not.
> The carriers are doing too much. They are prohibiting legal traffic.
Welcome to real world. Carriers are allowed to prohibit anything they want, in the U.S., that’s protected by the first amendment. Everything you’re complaining about has been true for years, you just haven’t done your research before. Realistically these changes are a complete nothing burger, carriers aren’t interested in actual scanning messages etc, they’re just looking for a fig leaf to demonstrate they’re doing something about the scrounge of SMS spam and phishing.
I refuse to pay, what are you going to do? Would this ever hold in court?
As long as the contract isn’t judged as being unfair (which is very unlikely), then yeah a court will uphold it, and court bailiff will confiscate property to see the fine paid.
Those contract provisions will create a consideration for payment between T-Mobile and their business partner, if their partner breaches the code-of-conduct, and a court will absolutely enforce those provisions. Eventually a court appointed bailiff will be instructed to recover the debt via the confiscation of assets, whether those assets are cash or other property will be entirely down to the solvency of the business the debt is being recovered from.
A court can ultimately do whatever the fuck it wants, sure, but one would expect it not to work.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that gateway providers like Bandwidth don’t all have contracts with T-Mobile which provisions for fines etc in them. I can guarantee you they do, there is zero chance that you can connect to T-Mobile network without entering into an air tight contract with them, which includes clauses to allow T-Mobile to unilaterally bill you for violations of the code-of-conduct.
How on earth are T-Mobile meant to provide any kind of service to gateways if they can’t write contracts with usage billing, and punitive clauses for bad behaviour, which courts will uphold. You’re basically suggesting that T-Mobile aren’t allowed to dictate how gateways use T-Mobile network, they either have to allow people to abuse their network, or simple not allow people to use their network. Which is patently ridiculous.
1. They apply to only to messaging gateways for sending mass messaging campaigns, not consumers.
2. This is part of a long running industry process (since at least 2020) for reducing the abuse of SMS messaging in U.S. for the purposes of spam and phishing.
3. T-Mobiles “Code of Conduct” has existed since November 2020.
4. These new fines are just the latest set of fines for abusing messaging services. Since 2020 a number of fines have been introduced, but they’ve focused initially on simple technical violations (sending mass messages without properly registering your source number, or properly registering your campaign).
5. Reading around, it seems industry players are expecting these violations to be detected via customer complaints, rather than actual scanning messages. It seems the networks don’t have the infrastructure or the interest is mass scanning messages. But if they see unusual levels of complaints from customers, associated with a specific gateway or campaign, then they’ll manually review customer complaints, associated messages and issue the appropriate fines to originating gateway.
TL;DR if you’re not mass sending SMS via A2P (application to person) platforms, this has zero impact on. Except you should start getting less spam.
Having worked with quite a few telcos, I’m not surprised. Most of them struggle enough keeping their Lawful Intercept systems running properly (most people would probably be surprised to know how often wiretaps are messed up by service providers). I can’t imagine they’re especially eager to start running content analysis on their SMS traffic.
I find the whole thing a little creepy.
Seriously, I think more and more about building a LoRa network with friends. https://meshtastic.org/