The WSJ‘s Joanna Stern recently highlighted the frustrations many of us share around text messaging spam, and the tools and tactics she covered were spot-on—some even new to me despite years in the industry.
The problem, though, is far from simple.
AT&T, in its recent FCC filing, reported blocking 9.5 billion texts in 2023, with political texting responsible for three of the top five reasons for spam complaints. The “report junk” feature on both Android and Apple, while convenient, adds to the problem: It creates noisy feedback for carriers that now have to differentiate between legitimate spam/scams and merely unwanted but valid messages.
One of the toughest challenges lies in distinguishing between application-to-person (A2P) and person-to-person (P2P) messaging. Unlike A2P, P2P lacks consistent opt-in management, complicating spam identification and management even further.
One test of this theory would be to see the phone numbers that Joanna cited in her column and determine who owns, hosts, and uses those numbers. I know some of you are already on it. . . .