AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday joined a multistate letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to prevent consumers from receiving spam text messages.
According to Paxton's office, the letter is in support of the FCC's proposed rule to require mobile wireless providers to block these illegal messages at the network level when they appear to come from invalid, unallocated or unused numbers, as well as numbers on a Do-Not-Originate list.
The proposal adds to the FCC's prior efforts, also supported by Paxton, to stop robocalls and initiate similar blocking mandates.
"The proposed rule comes at a critical time, with scammers increasingly using text messaging schemes to try to take advantage of consumers," Paxton's office said in a press release on Monday. "In 2021, the FCC received more than 15,000 consumer complaints about unwanted texts and, in 2020, scammers stole more than $86 million through frauds perpetrated via scam text messages."