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Verizon Fights Back Against Mobile Phone Spam

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the corporate-cheerleading-is-ok-this-time dept.

The Register is reporting that Verizon filed two separate lawsuits earlier this week against companies it claims spammed their customers with automated telemarketing calls. In addition to seeking a cease and desist, they are also apparently seeking "monetary damages."

8 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Monetary damages by FirienFirien · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How can they claim monetary damages? Presumably they got complaints from their clients - but their clients would have footed the support bill.

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    1. Re:Monetary damages by nacturation · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Punitive, not necessarily compensation.

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  2. Telemarketing is just another job by ReformedExCon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are many jobs that very few people are willing to do because the pay and working conditions are so poor. Telemarketing is one of those jobs. But, as they say, you can't have a world full of doctors without an army of janitors. Someone's got to do the work that no one wants to do. And I sympathize with those people who have to choose between working a terrible telemarketing job and eating.

    If a telemarketing company is barred from using automated phone dialers to make calls, then they ought to be taken to task for it. I don't think any one will argue with that. But these companies typically have a couple dozen people on staff who can be trained to punch in phone numbers all day long, so it's not like they couldn't just do the same thing manually. In fact, I wish they would do it that way (it would get rid of that annoying split second of silence before you realize you've been caught).

    I'm lucky to have been able to avoid falling so low as to have to work one of those jobs, but there are many people who choose to do so. They aren't the ones who you ought to aim your rage at, but at the companies who hire them.

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    1. Re:Telemarketing is just another job by Darkon · · Score: 4, Insightful


      Telemarketing is just another job

      You're telling me that scamming vulnerable and trusting elderly folks into buying stuff they don't need or making dodgy investments is 'just another job'?

    2. Re:Telemarketing is just another job by pintomp3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      you're right. same goes for those in organized crime. they are simply trying to make a living. if not them, then the crime bosses would hire someone else. /sarcasm funny thing is, you're not even making them out to be like meter-maids, which is an argument with a case. you are making them out to be garbagemen or something that society can't do without. perhaps you need to be interrupted during dinner with sales pitches, but most people can do without this service. i think you need a little more reform.

  3. Re:Easy solution to phone spam... by hattig · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Even simpler, just make messages (of any sort - SMS, MMS) sender-pays-all.

    Many home phones are getting this functionality as well, so even in the UK (Mobile numbers start 07) you can't guarantee in the long run that you will be messaging a mobile or a phone number, although when you are it will be obvious!

    That way you can still have your mobile number smushed into the rest of the nation's telephone number scheme, without paying however much to receive spam texts, and sharing the cost of telephone calls.

  4. Number portability. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Here in the USA we have number portability.
    You guys in other countries may not know that here one can transfer a cell phone number to a land line and a land line to a cell phone.

    This means you cannot have a simple "area code" for cell phones. It's much more complicated and liberated than your closed systems.

    Get over it.
    It's just a database issue, that's all.

  5. Re:Auto Dialer exceptions by pintomp3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The part of i wonder about is how far can you stretch an "established business relationship". i bought something from you or the company you used to be or the a company you are related to years ago? how do i end this relationship? it's like getting calls from some drunken one-night-stand, her sisters, and her kids for rest of your life (no, u'r not the father).