FCC Votes 3-0 To Ease ‘Revoke All’ Rule for Calls, Texts
By CU Today Staff —
WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-0 Wednesday to revise Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules that financial institutions warned could prevent them from sending members and customers important fraud alerts and other account-related messages after a consumer opted out of a different category of calls or texts.
The action changes the FCC’s “revoke all” rule and its “provided number” requirement.
Under the change, callers making informational automated calls or texts generally will be permitted to treat an opt-out request as applying to the category of communications to which the request was directed, rather than automatically revoking consent for every category of future communication. Marketing opt-outs will continue to apply to future marketing communications. The FCC is also allowing callers, with proper disclosure, to designate particular methods through which consumers may revoke consent.
The FCC also revised its “provided number” condition affecting an exemption for certain time-sensitive financial institution communications, including suspected-fraud and data-breach alerts. Instead of limiting those communications to wireless numbers provided directly by customers, institutions will be able to use numbers obtained through a “reliable source,” including an authorized spouse or family member, when a customer calls the institution, or records obtained from another financial institution.
The changes had been backed by America’s Credit Unions and the Defense Credit Union Council, which joined other financial-services groups in arguing the existing framework could cause consumers who opted out of one type of communication to inadvertently lose fraud alerts, low-balance notices and multifactor-authentication messages. The groups also supported relaxing the provided-number restriction. The FCC’s action follows years of financial-industry requests to modify the TCPA requirements.
Originally reported by CU Today.