A text is treated as a call — and that works in your favour.
Unsolicited SMS sits under the same federal statute as robocalls. That means the same consent requirement, the same burden on the sender to prove it, and the same statutory damages per message. Volume is what makes text cases add up.
The rules that apply to SMS
Text messages have long been treated as calls for the purposes of the federal statute. The practical consequences are significant:
A marketing text sent to your mobile using automated equipment or an artificial/prerecorded element generally requires prior express written consent — a signed agreement, clearly disclosing that you will receive automated marketing at that number, and stating that you are not required to agree in order to buy anything.
Statutory damages are $500 per message, and a court may treble that to $1,500 for a willful or knowing violation. A three-month campaign at a few texts a week is not a trivial number.
Replying STOP is decisive. Terms like STOP, END, QUIT, UNSUBSCRIBE and OPT OUT are treated as reasonable ways to revoke consent, and a sender may not force you into some other exclusive method. Messages that arrive afterwards are far harder to defend.
Several states now require you to ask the sender to stop and allow a set number of days to cure before a text claim exists at all. Missing that step can end an otherwise strong case — which is exactly why the opt-out log matters so much.
Why their consent record usually falls apart
Almost every text-message defence is some version of *you signed up for this*. Usually what they actually hold is much thinner than that.
Marketing texts are overwhelmingly driven by purchased leads. Somewhere upstream, a landing page — a quote comparator, a sweepstakes, a "check your rate" form, sometimes a fake job board — captured a number and attached a consent artifact to it. By the time that record reaches the sender it may have passed through several aggregators, each hop degrading it.
Was the disclosure actually displayed? Not the page as it looks today — the page as rendered at that moment, with the disclosure placement and the full list of authorised companies.
Was this sender on the list? Under the name it actually does business under.
Was it even you? Numbers are mistyped, harvested and fabricated at scale.
Was the number reassigned after the consent was given, so the consent belongs to someone else entirely?
Is the chain intact? Every hop between capture and send should have a transfer record. Gaps are fatal to their proof, and gaps are common.
What to preserve
Screenshots of every message showing the sending number and the timestamp — not a forwarded copy
The full thread exported, if your phone supports it
Every STOP or opt-out reply you sent, with its date and time, and every message that arrived afterwards
The link in the message — captured, not clicked. The destination often identifies the company faster than anything else
Any short code used, and whether the sender identified itself at all
Whether you have any account or contract with the company being advertised — this matters, because an arbitration clause you accepted elsewhere can quietly govern the claim
Keep reading
Spam Calls — Robocalls, spoofing and the DNC rules.
Spam Email — Why email works differently — and harder.