Open the source. Check the date. Keep the record.

October 12, 2026: STOP guide updated

The STOP guide now opens with a direct answer, explains the outside processing limit and non-reply systems, and adds a practical sequence for preserving later messages. Its revised title is “Reply STOP to Marketing Texts: What Happens Next?” The original publication date and URL remain unchanged.

A dated section distinguishes the current rule from FCC 26-67, released October 1. The order’s amendments take effect thirty days after Federal Register publication, not on release; they are not presented as effective on the guide’s October 12 review date. The earlier waiver’s January 31, 2027 date is no longer presented without this later-order context.

October 9, 2026: dataset reuse license added

The publication’s original FTC and FCC aggregate compilations are now offered under CC BY 4.0, including compilations accompanying earlier weekly analyses. The data hub, weekly analysis pages and download notes state the scope and attribution terms; the hub’s Dataset structured data now includes the license URL. Agency-source rights remain separate. This licensing and metadata update does not change reporting totals, article publication dates or the dates of substantive source review.

October 9, 2026: reporting data refreshed through October 4

The data hub adds September 28–October 4: 57,427 FTC report records and 3,500 FCC complaint tickets. These are separate, unverified reporting measures, not unique people or counts of unlawful calls. The comparison now contains 51 matched weeks.

All 53 stored FTC weeks were recomputed from available releases without changes to their totals. The new week has seven observed dates for each agency; that does not establish release completeness, and later backfill may change the figures. Existing historical gaps remain disclosed. Independent full-row recomputation confirmed the new FTC total, and the reproduction script checks the refreshed descriptive statistics against the documented inputs.

October 2, 2026: reporting data refreshed through September 27

The data hub now includes four additional FTC reporting weeks, beginning August 31 through September 21, and FCC counts for those weeks plus August 24. The comparison grows from 45 matched weeks to 50. September 21–27 contains 61,553 FTC report records and 3,437 FCC complaint tickets; the agencies are not added together.

Recomputation from available FTC releases left all 48 previously stored weekly totals unchanged. The September 14 calculation includes an additional suffixed release and suppresses 10,625 overlapping full-row occurrences; identical rows within a release remain counted. Every newly charted week has seven observed reporting dates, but that does not establish complete release coverage. Totals remain provisional, and the existing historical gaps remain disclosed. The input manifest and reproduction script document the refreshed calculations.

September 30, 2026: opt-outs, prevention and settlement choices

The STOP guide previously described a waiver as running “through 2027” across other message categories. It now gives the January 31, 2027 date and the limited unrelated-informational-matter scope of DA 26-12. It does not describe a general suspension of opt-out duties.

The spam-text response guide no longer suggests that a sender’s noncompliance makes revocation law inapplicable. Applicable duties turn on legal elements and exceptions, not willingness to comply. Preservation now comes before potentially destructive inbox actions, not only after an opt-out.

The prevention guide distinguishes a registry’s practical limits from legal coverage and qualifies registration, business-relationship and processing-period statements using §64.1200. It no longer implies a law reaches only compliant senders.

The settlement guide no longer assumes every settlement requires a claim form, every form is sworn, or payment follows a universal sequence. Exclusion and binding-effect explanations are qualified to Rule 23(b)(3); actual notices and court orders govern particular procedures. Basis: Rule 23.

The preservation guide adds a practical checklist and a clearly fictional annotated sequence. It does not instruct readers to record live calls. Original publication dates remain unchanged; these guides show a substantive September 30 update.

September 18, 2026: texts-as-calls collection

The circuit and state case map separates §227(b), §227(c)(5), recommendations, supporting discussions and historical decisions, with individual opinion links and review status. Scope of a statutory term is not the same as winning a case. No exhaustive national tally or comprehensive subsequent-history check is claimed.

Later on September 18, the selection panel was revised to summarize the selected courts’ positions. Case-record totals and source-availability notes were simplified; the underlying case classifications did not change.

September 18, 2026: calls resource hub

The /calls/ URL is restored as an educational resource hub. It is not a restoration of the withdrawn number directory. The two former number-prefix report URLs redirect to the hub; no caller-identification reports or private intelligence are published.

Publication dates: corrected September 16, 2026

Earlier pages labeled August 17 draft dates as publication dates. We reconstructed the earliest documented publication dates from repository publication records: August 18 for the five launch guides; August 19 for the settlement-claims guide; August 29 for the three August FTC analyses; September 15 for the two later spam-text guides. These are documented release dates, not independently retained first-live timestamps.

Material edits show a separate update date. Rebuilding the site alone does not refresh article dates or imply a fresh legal review.

September 16, 2026: FTC count corrections

A three-field deduplication key was incorrectly described as a full-row comparison. The replacement compares complete rows across releases and preserves the maximum within-file multiplicity. Reports for the weeks of August 3, August 10 and August 17 changed from 55,651 to 55,660; 58,657 to 58,658; and 59,828 to 59,836, respectively. Those revised figures are used in the articles and downloads.

Later release discovery also increased the previously partial August 24 total from 21,758 to 63,353, with seven reporting dates now observed. The series was recomputed. Input hashes and deduplication diagnostics document the calculation; all coverage remains provisional.

September 16, 2026: reporting interpretation and publication disclosures

Reporting data previously asked how many “people” reported and said the weekend drop was about filing rather than calling. Counts are now described as report records, not unique people. The causal conclusion is withdrawn: correlations between two reporting systems cannot separate calling activity from reporting behavior.

The earlier missing-week description asserted that the FTC published nothing. Missing local files do not establish that. Coverage is now described as observed dates and available releases, with possible backfill.

The public reported-number directory has been withdrawn. Reported caller numbers do not establish caller identity or wrongdoing and do not belong in this publication's public output. Private research is not a public source.

About and methodology now describe masthead authorship and automated review without implying routine human review. A blanket August 17 source-check label was removed because it did not establish current verification of every linked source.

Basis: inspection of the calculation code and publication records, and the FTC data documentation. These changes concern interpretation and process, not a new finding about any caller.

Correction policy

Material changes are recorded above. No public corrections mailbox or submission channel is currently available.

When a material factual or legal statement changes, the page should be updated promptly. A correction entry should preserve enough detail to understand what changed and why rather than silently replacing the proposition.