#FCC proposes new rules for AI-generated #robocalls and #robotexts

It's the agency's latest move to protect consumers and stop #election #misinformation by phone.
#robocall #robotext

https://www.engadget.com/ai/fcc-proposes-new-rules-for-ai-generated-robocalls-and-robotexts-200013807.html

The last more-or-less full work week of the year is about to start, and I know I’ll be working the week after that to meet the last deadlines I have in 2023.

12/11/2023: Teens Are Online ‘Almost Constantly,’ Usually on These Apps, PCMag

I got an advance look at this Pew Research Center study on teenage social-media use and found it enlightening–including the part where the teenagers in the study group said they were spending slightly less time on almost every social-media app compared to last year.

12/12/2023: Google Maps Location Data to Be Stored on Your Device, Not the Cloud, PCMag

Google surprised me with this announcement, in a good way. I needed other people–for example, Electronic Frontier Foundation general counsel Jennifer Lynch–to point out how this move could spell the end of “geofence warrants” asking for Google Maps records of everybody in a particular place at a particular time.

12/13/2023: 8th Grade Career Day, Thomas Jefferson Middle School

My last speaking gig of the year had me explaining the business I have chosen to three classes’ worth of eighth graders, with compensation in the form of free coffee and breakfast pastries.

(Patreon readers got a detailed recap of this event, including some of the smarter questions the students asked.)

12/15/2023: AT&T: Spam Texts Are Down By a Third, PCMag

After talking to one of AT&T’s executives about the drop in spam-text reports they’d seen, I wanted to see if the other two nationwide carriers or its regulators at the Federal Communications Commission had seen similar trends. Sadly, they had not.

12/16/2023: End of an Era: Google Groups to Drop Usenet Support, PCMag

The second bit of unexpected Google news this week took me all the way back to almost 30 years ago, when my online experience began with exploring Usenet on my dial-up AOL account.

https://robpegoraro.com/2023/12/17/weekly-output-teen-social-media-use-google-maps-timeline-privacy-journalism-as-a-career-spam-texts-google-groups-to-dump-usenet/

#careerDay #GoogleGroups #GoogleLocationHistory #GoogleMapsTimeline #PewResearchCenter #robotexts #spamTexts #teenSocialMediaUse #teenageSocialMediaUse #Usenet

Instant messages sent
From companies, consumers get
Digitally connected

#smsmarketing #robotexts #emailmarketing #haiku #poetry

https://www.vox.com/money/23786037/text-message-marketing-sms-companies-robotexts-spam-email

Gone in seconds: rising text message scams are draining US bank accounts

Sophisticated #robotexts are bombarding Americans’ phones, costing unsuspecting people millions of dollars

While #phishing texts have been around for years, data shows they are on the rise.
In 2022 US phone users got 157bn robotexts , or more than 440 a person – an 80% increase from 2021, according to the company Robokiller, which offers a scam-blocking service for cell phones.
And last year, more than 321,000 Americans reported having fallen for a phone-based smishing scam, with total losses of over $326m, according to data from the US Federal Trade Commission.
The problem has become so bad that last month the federal government demanded that mobile phone companies start blocking spam texts, in what the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) described as its first of several planned steps to combat the rampant phone fraud.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/apr/22/robo-texts-scams-bank-accounts?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Federal Communications Commission is cracking down on spammy text messages with new rules for telecom companies, citing a surge of consumer complaints in recent years tied to unwanted #robotexts. #FCC #spam

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/17/tech/fcc-spam-text-crackdown