First Lawsuit Against Cell-Phone Spammers

BMcWilliams writes "The PR machine at Verizon Wireless hasn't made any noise about this yet, but the carrier last month filed a lawsuit against some Rhode Island spammers who targeted its cell phone customers with over four million text-message ads for ephedra, penis pills, mortgages, etc. The timing of the lawsuit is interesting, given that the FCC is in the process of hammering out rules governing cell-phone spam. I am told the Verizon litigation is the first of its kind in the USA. My story about the lawsuit, and a copy of Verizon Wireless' complaint, are available here."

Comments

Reluctant kudos

[SIGALRM]

Verizon Wireless hasn't made any noise about this yet, but the carrier last month filed a lawsuit

In recent months, Verizon Wireless seems to have been doing a decent job protecting consumers from unwanted advertising.

In addition to their anti-spam efforts Verizon has opposed the cell-phone directory--and in the broadband-whore department, are at the forefront of deploying FTTP--which I personally want today. :)

I'm not a huge fan of VZW--although they do have great coverage, at least IMBY.

Credit on your bill?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I don't have a cell phone (yup, there actually ARE people without 'em) but I think there should be a way to get credit for the minutes that Spam costs a receiving cell.

Whitelisting is not the answer

[cephyn]

I hate whitelisting. Its just a poor way to protect the end user. There are many instances, both for email, or cell phones where a whitelist will block an important transmission. To push whitelisting as the solution is a cop-out. It increases litigation, but creating good, informed, solid and unambiguous laws is the best way to stop spammers.

seems less than profitable

[iamdrscience]

I'm not sure cellphone spam is such a great prospect from the spammers point of view anyways. You can't easily do nearly the same amount of volume. Based on the numbers from the article, these guys were only sending about one message every two seconds (~43,500 per day). Which may seem like a lot, but it's nothing when contrasted to a lot of e-mail spammers that are sending out millions of e-mails everyday.

Also, I would think that the conversion rate would be lower as well. I mean, with e-mail spam I can understand that a few people out of a million might see and open the message and decide to go to a company's buy whatever product the e-mail is selling. With cell phones, I don't really see the same thing happening as much. With e-mail, someone can click on a link and make an impulse buy in under 5 minutes. With cell spam, the person sees the message and then has to go out of their way to pursue the product.

Another type of spam...

[howman]

I have a NTT DoCoMo cell phone, and although I use white listing to only allow the few people who actually have my private number to reach me, another form of spam goes on here that does not involve e-mail or text message.
Here seedy companies, usually based in Tokyo phone your number and hang up after 1 ring. They then bank on the fact that you will call them back figuring you missed an important call. The number that comes up on the display is for a pay per min, up front minimum charge service. When you don't pay, they actually send goons to get the money out of you.
Granted it is difficult to block numbers comming from a specific area code, especially if you live in that area. I fortunately do't live in the area where most of these calls come from, so seeing a different area code is a pretty good indication it is spam.
While white listing is a bit of a pain, and as others have pointed out may block important information you were not expecting from comming through, the amount of spam I was getting previous to turing it on was mental. something to the tune of 20 a day using a e-mail address on my phone that there is no way a name generator could come up with. I was limited to 25 characters for my name and I used a random set of numbers and letters as well as the few non-basic characters I was allowd to, and still within 20 min of setting up the account I had spam.
Now if only I could get a spam filter plugin for my phone things would be great, though I do believe the filter should be hosted on DoCoMo's end and configureable by myself.

Nigerian cell phone spam

[frankthechicken]

In their usual way, Nigeria appears to be leading the way in the causes of spam, but in this case with a slight twist.

Most of the cell phone spam I get...

[jd]

...is from my cell phone provider! And I bet you that the FCC regulations (when they do finish them) make the cell phone companies exempt.

Bah!