Marketing Texts Meant for Someone Else: Wrong and Reassigned Numbers

Separate a wrong name from a number-ownership history

For your records, distinguish what you can see from what you infer. You can record that the text addresses another person and that your carrier assigned you the number on a particular date. Unless you have additional records, leave unknown how the sender obtained it or whether a prior subscriber dealt with that business.

Keep the carrier’s assignment or activation record, the first message and later contacts. If you already told a verified sender it has the wrong person, preserve your exact words and any acknowledgment. Do not impersonate the intended recipient or give account information to investigate the message.

Why the previous subscriber’s consent is not the same question

In Soppet v. Enhanced Recovery, the Seventh Circuit interpreted the called party under §227(b)(1) as the subscriber at the time of the call, rather than the person a collector intended to reach. It rejected using the former subscriber’s consent as continuing permission after reassignment.

Soppet involved debt-collection calls and a particular statutory issue. It is not a nationwide finding that every wrong-number marketing text is unlawful. The decision predates the current reassigned-number database safe harbor and the Supreme Court’s Duguid technology ruling, which must be considered separately.

Source basis: 679 F.3d 637 (7th Cir. 2012) · 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200 · 592 U.S. 395 (2021)

What the Reassigned Numbers Database does not prove

The FCC’s rule provides a specific safe harbor for certain callers that previously obtained the required consent, appropriately checked the database using current reported numbering information, received a “no” response, and called because that response was erroneous. The caller bears the specified burden of proof.

That is not permission simply because a business owns an old customer list. Nor does the database create consent from you. Keep the reassignment date in your record; whether a sender actually made a qualifying query is a different fact that may not be visible in your text thread.

Source basis: 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200

An automated-looking text is not the whole TCPA analysis

The FCC’s cellular-call rule addresses calls using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice, with consent and exemption questions addressed separately. In Facebook v. Duguid, the Supreme Court held that an ATDS must have the capacity to use a random or sequential number generator to store or produce the telephone numbers to be called. Repeated messages or a standardized template alone do not establish that technical element. Other TCPA provisions have different requirements.

Source basis: 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200 · 592 U.S. 395 (2021)

A fictional chronology

A fictional recipient receives a new number in June. In July, a store sends an offer addressed to someone else. The recipient saves the carrier record, the whole offer and a later wrong-person/stop exchange with the verified store. Another message arrives in August.

The record separates the ownership date, message purpose and notice to the sender. It does not reveal the sending technology, whether a database query occurred or whether another consent record exists. Those gaps should stay visible rather than being filled with assumptions.

If the sender is unfamiliar

Do not use an unexpected text’s link to provide personal or financial information. The FTC recommends independently finding a company’s genuine contact route when a message might be real. Its guidance also describes device and carrier blocking options and reporting through the messaging app or 7726. Save the message first if you want a record; a block or report is not itself a legal ruling.

Source basis: FTC Consumer Advice

Choose the relevant follow-up guide

If the message is asking for payment on another person’s account rather than advertising a purchase, debt-collection rules raise separate questions beyond this marketing-text guide. For recognizable marketing, the STOP and preservation guides below explain the next recordkeeping steps. This page concerns number ownership, not a conclusion about your individual messages.