I've had 3 so far this year in the UK - all to do with car finance overpayments (I don't have a car!). They were all marked as spam automatically, so none of them caused a notification.

I suspect this is another example of the pathetic form of American exceptionalism - "no way to prevent this, says the only country where this regularly happens".

Is there no regulator willing to step in to force the telcos to block spam and scam texts? If not, why not?