Spammer, no spamming

In June 2021, a federal law went into effect requiring all telephone carriers to combat robocalls with anti-spam technology. And it seems to have worked. Robocalls over the next year fell from 2.1 billion to 1.1 billion, per a new report from the US Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer watchdog.

Great news, right? Well.. kind of. The number of robotexts sent increased 1,100% over the same period, per the report, to reach a whopping 12 billion/month. That’s 36 texts/month for every American – including babies, who obviously don’t have cell phones (unless you’re Boss Baby, that is💁‍♀️).

🤖💬 A deeper dive… Text scams are particularly dangerous, experts say, because we’ve grown accustomed to receiving robotexts for legitimate purposes – like a login verification code or package delivery status. And in the wild, scam robotexts often manifest as unexpected messages about a gift, a bank account freeze, or a reimbursement for something you supposedly purchased recently.

• The FCC issued an alert last month saying instances of these scams are on the rise, and a spokesperson told the WSJ the agency is discussing action to treat robotext similar to robocalls – but nothing official is on the way yet.

📸 The big picture: Per FTC data, roughly 2.2 million Americans reported total losses of $3.3 billion to digital fraud in 2020, more than ¼ of which resulted from a text message.

+In the know: Like robocalls, the number you see as the sender of these texts isn’t necessarily where it comes from. Sometimes, scammers will even send out texts appearing to have come from your own phone.