Motorola Sues Over Pager Spam

erroneus writes "There's been a lot of talk about pager spamming. I've got to hand it to the spammers. Their combination of low conscience and creativity makes them the continual annoyances they are today. But many people are charged for each page they recieve. " Update: 07/10 06:22 PM by H : I apologize to the people who were mislead about by the summary - I had assumed that it read one way, and did not. Here's a summary from nategasser: "...when in fact they're sending regular email offering an off-brand pager and calling it a Motorola."

Comments

Make Money Faster Than God

[LaNMaN2000]

SUE THE SPAMMERS! Then, send $1 to each of the last 6 people who did the same, append your name to the bottom of the list, and send away.

Spamming is not the main problem here

[b1t r0t]

The problem is that the spammers claimed to be offering Motorola pagers when they weren't. The main problem in this case seems to be misuse of trademarks and (not surprisingly for spammers) fradulent misrepresentation of what they were offering. But I do hope Moto puts the hammer down nice and hard on these cockroaches of the internet.

This is about email spam

[StormCrow]

I didn't read anything in the linked article about people spamming pagers. The article seems to be about Motorla suing a company that was email spamming people claiming to give away Motorola pager, when they were really giving away a different (inferior) brand. It appears the lawsuit is more about false advertizing and trademark dillution than the actual spam.

Bogus headline, bogus writeup

[dillon_rinker]

This would be better titled "Motorola sues over trademark violation." The fact that the ad was sent via pager is totally irrelevant. The fact that the ad said they were offering a Motorola T-10 pager, when in fact they were not, is the reason Motorola was suing.

Come on people

[Zaknafein500]

I've heard complaints about the editorial staff getting lazy...this proves it. The article (which I remember reading on News.com when it was first posted more than a month ago) is about a company falsely advertising a Motorola pager. Do the editors even look at the articles to make sure that they pertain to what they person was talking about?

Re:Come on people

[Erasmus Darwin]

Do the editors even look at the articles to make sure that they pertain to what they person was talking about?

Let's not forget the submitter's culpability in all this. Slashdot editors have a multitude of stories to deal with. This submitter had only one submission to worry about, but managed to still completely fuck it up. The only thing I can think of is that the submitter was desperately watching news sites for Slashdot-themed news, and didn't want to miss out on the chance of being first submitter by wasting the time necessary to actually read the article.

New SPAM!!

[ageitgey]

Recently seen on website banner:

"Punch the moving slashdot editor and win $20*"

*There is no slashdot editor

Slashdot readers sue over bogus bullshit "news"

[duffbeer703]

Story at 11

Re:Makes sense

[tomk]

Not true. Many forms of spam pass the cost on to the innocent "spammee". For instance, email spam places a burden on network infrastructure, and increases the required size of email inboxes. The cost for this is then passed on to the consumer via increasing cost for ISPs.

The best way to combat these types of spam is to shift the cost of spamming onto the spammer. For instance, charge people who send the pages, rather than those who receive them (perhaps allow some number of "free" pages per month from each originating phone number). Charge those who send emails, based on the volume of email sent. Again, have a maximum "free" amount of email that can be sent before being charged for it.

In fact, if costs of spamming could all be shifted to the spammers, then the revenue from that could be used to provide "normal" users with the free (gratis) services that they've come to expect from the internet economy, at the expense of having to deal with increased targeted advertising. Think of over-the-air TV, where the advertisers foot the whole bill.. The same thing could be done with email, pages, etc..
-TomK

Re:I've seen SMS spam too

[kilgore_47]

I've never heard of sending spam directly to pagers, though I don't doubt that it could happen. The ZD article, however, is about good old fashion email spam that is about a free pager offer. The /. blurb makes it sound like the spam is sent to pagers (But many people are charged for each page they recieve.) but thats not what the story is about! For those too lazy to read the link (ie hemos perhaps?) the lawsuit is regarding "free motorola pagers" that are not actually made by motorola.

___

My Motorola Pager spams...

[sdo1]

Since late April, I've received 18 spams with the words "Motorola Pager" in the subject. Obviously, as with most spams, remove doesn't work and only lets them know that your email address is indeed valid. All of those spams contained one of two 800 numbers:

1(800)443-0596
1(800)761-0511

I offer those numbers as a service to the slashdot community since I know you all might be interested in getting yourself one of these "free" pagers.

Now, I just love spammers as much as the next guy... so I would recommend making sure that as many people as possible see this message (hint, mod me up to +5). Then if everyone calls to inquire about the pagers, think of all the business these spammers will get! Don't call too many times because as you know, each call to an 800 number costs the owners of that number MONEY. We don't want their phone bill to be too high, now do we?

And don't call unless you're actually interested. We wouldn't want to waste THEIR resources to take care of our pointless calls, would we?

-S