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Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

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Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#101

Post by cjm42 »

onphonenow wrote: post #45
Turing_Machine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Twilio can detect that it's spam, surely the correct procedure would be to block it when it first comes into Twilio's system from outside, not blindly forwarding it to a customer's list and then blaming the customer for it! Sorry, this is just bad design. Re: > The customer may want to handle / filter the spam. Then provide the customer with a "yes, send me all the spam" option. Which do you suppose is the common…

False. The customer may want to handle / filter the spam. The customer may be do a study of spam. The customer may be offering their customers a spam blocking service. Fine to provide an option to filter it perhaps, requiring twilio to block what it THINKS is spam is a recipe for disaster, spam filters are no where near perfect.

They could at least provide an indication when delivering the spam that "Twilio believes this message is spam and will block your account if you try to resend it".

Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#102

Post by mindslight »

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #43
soco wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And where are those people receiving the spam message in the first place? From Twilio's system right. If they are so good at detecting it circulating internally, why didn't they detect it and block it in the first place?

It is simply against the ToS to send spam over twilios network. Objectively this is what OP is doing. You are allowed to receive spam maybe your core business even depends on getting spam numbers or analyzes the spam for phishing links itself. You can receive and ingest it in anything you want you just can't send it over twilio yourself. Sorry this is not a design flaw this is just a bad workflow.

> Objectively this [send spam] is what OP is doing

No, no it is not. These are legitimate consentual messages, regardless of the content. Please stop applying mechanical interpretations of obtuse rules and pretending it's some profound wisdom. Twilio and the rest of Big Tech are already doing this enough, thank you.

Ultimately I think this problem is the end game of companies finding ways to absolve themselves of any liability through contracts of adhesion. When there is no downside to harming 1% of your customers besides losing 1% of revenue, biasing for egregious false positives makes financial sense. Same thing with terrible customer service policies crafted around keeping costs down, that prevent easily correcting these terrible automated decisions. About the only thing one can do is signal boost so others stay the fuck away from services built on broken assumptions, hopefully turning that 1% into maybe 10% where it starts to hurt them and they're once again encouraged to do competent system design.

Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#103

Post by starwind »

ewoodh2o wrote: post #98

This is really frustrating, and sorry you're on the receiving end of this. I don't work for Twilio, but we spend a lot with them (and some other telecoms) so I see a bit further up the chain than most. The retail wireless carriers are really driving a lot of this with recent 10DLC A2P changes. In particular, T-Mobile is waving around threats of $10k fines per message for messages they deem to be in violation of their…

Spam texts like that basically destroyed my phone number that I've had for 15 years :(

"You package (#US853121) containing the following products: 1. iPhone 13. Cannot be delivered until outstanding duties have been paid. Current outstanding balance: $1.68. More info "

I get about 20 of these a day. I've lodged multiple complaints. Like, why can't AT&T solve this problem that AOL solved in 1994?

Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#104

Post by tzs »

teh_klev wrote: post #20
howdydoo wrote: post #11

Auto-banning an account is a violation of GDPR Article 22 https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ > The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her. Quote this and maybe it will get you escalated, but who knows? A lot of companies seem to just igno…

GDPR can only be enforced for citizens in the EU/EEA and (for now) the UK. I think the OP is based in the US as is Twilio.

Nitpick: The GDPR says it applies to persons who are "in the Union", which seems it would cover non-citizens who reside in (or are even just visiting) the EU, and would not cover EU citizens who are not in the Union.

Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#105

Post by lowbloodsugar »

starwind wrote: post #103
ewoodh2o wrote: post #98

This is really frustrating, and sorry you're on the receiving end of this. I don't work for Twilio, but we spend a lot with them (and some other telecoms) so I see a bit further up the chain than most. The retail wireless carriers are really driving a lot of this with recent 10DLC A2P changes. In particular, T-Mobile is waving around threats of $10k fines per message for messages they deem to be in violation of their…

Spam texts like that basically destroyed my phone number that I've had for 15 years :( "You package (#US853121) containing the following products: 1. iPhone 13. Cannot be delivered until outstanding duties have been paid. Current outstanding balance: $1.68. More info " I get about 20 of these a day. I've lodged multiple complaints. Like, why can't AT&T solve this problem that AOL solved in 1994?

I suspect you just have to pay for it and allow them to read and retain and aggregate your messages and use them for advertising.

Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#106

Post by teh_klev »

tzs wrote: post #104
teh_klev wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR can only be enforced for citizens in the EU/EEA and (for now) the UK. I think the OP is based in the US as is Twilio.

Nitpick: The GDPR says it applies to persons who are "in the Union", which seems it would cover non-citizens who reside in (or are even just visiting) the EU, and would not cover EU citizens who are not in the Union.

Yeah, re-reading I should have used "persons" rather than "citizens"; was playing a fast and loose with the meaning of "citizen" and didn't actually mean a "citizen of".

Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#107

Post by desmosxxx »

onphonenow wrote: post #45
Turing_Machine wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Twilio can detect that it's spam, surely the correct procedure would be to block it when it first comes into Twilio's system from outside, not blindly forwarding it to a customer's list and then blaming the customer for it! Sorry, this is just bad design. Re: > The customer may want to handle / filter the spam. Then provide the customer with a "yes, send me all the spam" option. Which do you suppose is the common…

False. The customer may want to handle / filter the spam. The customer may be do a study of spam. The customer may be offering their customers a spam blocking service. Fine to provide an option to filter it perhaps, requiring twilio to block what it THINKS is spam is a recipe for disaster, spam filters are no where near perfect.

provide an option? send spam to some other bucket that the customer can view? label it so customer can filter it? warn them / block outbound spam (if it's not high qps I dont see a reason for the zero tolerance here, some kind of restricted mode is more reasonable). Communicate with the customer, especially when they contact you..

So many other options here

Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#108

Post by ihumanable »

Xylakant wrote: post #26
onphonenow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually very glad Twilio doesn't allow itself to be used for SMS spam. I hate SMS spam. Twilio doesn't know that these are "employees".

Twilio could fairly easily verify that the phone number owner consents: when setting up the recipient number, allow for double opt in - send a verification code that must be entered somewhere.

I worked at Twilio for 6 years, the carriers would never allow the thing you are asking for.

Twilio outbounds the SMS message over the carrier network. Part of that relationship is that Twilio has to prevent spam from entering the carrier network, or the carriers will ban the interconnect.

Here's the full workflow of this situation.

The inbound leg looks like this.

[Spammer] -SMS-> [Carrier] -SMS-> [Twilio] -HTTP-> [Customer]

The outbound leg looks like this (the customer initiates this in response to the HTTP request)

[Customer] -HTTP/TWIML-> [Twilio] -SMS (SPAM DETECTION HERE)-> [Carrier] -SMS-> [Employee]

All of these parties are separate entities, each enforcing spam blocking. Twilio is incentivized to not transit spam over the Carrier because the Carrier will get upset at Twilio. Twilio has no way to tell the Carrier "Oh, hey, this is spam, but the customer owns the number and they said they were cool with getting spam, please don't get angry"

Re: Ask HN: Twilio suspended account because someone sent us a fraud text

#109

Post by desmosxxx »

helloworld11 wrote: post #82
gregorymichael wrote: post #18

Hey Chris, Greg from Twilio here. I'm so sorry for the frustration, lack of communication, and high friction to get this resolved. Want to drop me an email at gb@twilio.com and we'll see if we can get it sorted out?

The fact that this particular customer was only able to get a "friendly" human resolution for this by first posting about his problem on a tech-heavy social media platform like HN speaks very poorly about your company's customer service. I know that the giants like Google, Facebook et al shit all over their users now that they're large, but it would be nice to believe that it hasn't turned into a fad even among small…

Even employees of those companies can't get help when they need it. I've seen a case where an employee's account was incorrectly banned (or well that was their assumption) and they still couldn't get through to any of the teams.

It's getting pretty rediculous

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