Washington CNN —The 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. The new rules require phone providers to block text messages from suspicious sources including phone numbers that appear to be “invalid, unallocated, or unused.” Carriers will also have to block text messages coming from phone numbers that claim not to ever send text messages, or that the government has identified as numbers not used for texting, the FCC said. But in recent years, an explosion of spam and scam text messages appears to have taken their place, leading to more than 18,000 consumer complaints at the FCC last year. The FCC is mulling additional regulations that could, among other things, apply Do Not Call registry protections to text messages for the first time. The FCC said it is also considering making it harder for marketers to use a single consumer consent to flood that user with calls and text messages from multiple sources and numbers.

---