Customer Protection in the Day and Age of Text Marketing

This year marks the 22nd anniversary of history's first text message. It was sent from an employee to a supervisor, and it read "Merry Christmas."

In the more than two decades since, short messaging service, or SMS, has become a universal core of human communication.

It is estimated that in 2012 alone, 9.6 trillion SMS messages were sent.

With statistics showing that businesses increased mobile marketing budgets by more than 100 percent in 2013, and that text messages are 8 times as effective at engaging customers than other mobile media, text marketing is still the undisputed king of mobile marketing.

SMS Security: Identity Theft and Fraud

But other, more ominous statistics must be considered as well.

The IRS reported hundreds of cases in which people were convicted of crafty and devious digital identity theft schemes in 2014 alone - and those were only the ones who got caught.

Like every other crime, behind each conviction are countless perpetrators who victimized unsuspecting people and got away scott free.

It is difficult to compile statistics on how many frauds and identity thefts originated from text marketing.

But security reports show that - although many text marketing scams are limited to annoying spam - far more dangerous denial-of-service attacks, GT scanning schemes, SMS interworking crimes and subscriber identity module farming can and do lead to catastrophic data breaches.

Text message marketing is huge business, and where there is lots of money changing hands, criminals looking to skim are never far behind.

As the following article shows, for mobile marketers, “Text marketing and the protection of privacy” must go hand in hand.

Play by the Rules

First and foremost, know and follow the Federal Communications Commission's text-marketing rules, which recently underwent major changes and may be amended again in the future.

Simply put, they are designed to protect both your business and the privacy and security of customer data.

Protect Your Customers

Second, remember that SMS messaging was never designed to be a secure platform.

Never solicit sensitive data such as personal or financial information over a text message. In fact, insert language instructing recipients not to include such information. Instead, link them to a secure site and handle any transaction there.

Remember that the general population is acutely aware of the threat of identity theft, hacking and fraud.

Take steps to protect your customers, but also to protect yourself from the perception of being an unscrupulous or suspicious entity, for which savvy customers are always alert. Never solicit through the intimate medium of texting without permission.

Always give them a way to opt out of future messages, keep your contact list up to date and always ask them to alert you if they receive a suspicious text - or any communication - that appears to come from your business.