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Verizon Wins Injunction Against Text Spammer
bulled writes "CNet is running a story illustrating the US court system's ongoing harsh opinion about unwarranted communications of any kind. Verizon Wireless recently won a lawsuit against a company that was delivering massive numbers of spam text messages to its customers. Specialized Programming and Marketing and Henderson was ordered to pay more than $200,000 in damages to Verizon Wireless, some two years after Verizon filed the suit against the company. In 2005 Specialized Programming sent some 100,000 emails to Verizon phones. Verizon now has an injunction against the Marketing firm, another win for a company that has developed a reputation for going after spammers."
Good job taking care of inbound spam, but whan will they do something about spam emanating from their networks?
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https://nssg.trendmicro.com/nrs/reports/rank.php?
See #5.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Thanks for stopping the spam, Verizon, but are you going to keep all those damages for yourself?
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Specialised Programming and Marketing and Henderson
SPaMaH!
Surely that's too good to be true!
Natsu gusa-ya, Tsuwamono domo-ga, Yume no ato
Clicking on a link and getting an unnecessary advertisement for Best Buy before being able to read the story.
Also watching the number of FIOS broadband IP blocks that I have to ban skyrocket due to open proxies and SMTP spammers loving the large pipes.
$200,000 verizon dollars is only $2,000 US dollars...
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
I've had Verizon for over 2 years now, and I really don't receive any text spam. But I still say good. Now, share the wealth;)
About one in 10 SMS messages I get are from Sprint (I'm a Sprint customer) advertising a service, ringtone or some other downloadable. So excuse me while I don't feel Verizon's pain.
Dear Verizon,
Can you please sue my carrier, Cingular*, for all the text messages they send me?
Thanks
* Cingular is soon to be part of AT&T, not the AT&T we all remember, but the new AT&T that was SBC until they renamed themselves AT&T after they bought what was left of AT&T after they ran themselves into the ground. Not to be confused with AT&T wireless, that was sold off to Cingular and them merged in with them.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Have your cell carrier turn off text messaging on your account. Worked for me.
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I wonder how harsher the sentence would be if it was some "hacker" kid who was sending the spam.
$200,000 seems pretty cheap for a computer crime, He should have got life in jail and a $1,000,000 fine.
That's a good reason to be a Verizon customer. Didn't they also fight the RIAA as much as they could about turning over Internet subscriber information?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Verizon now has an injunction against the Marketing firm, another win for a company that has developed a reputation for going after spammers."
Good for Verizon. But what about the peasants who use Verizon? I got a wrong-number text message once (no texting in my plan, I have to pay 10cents per tet received), and Verizon made me pay for it. OK, only a few cents, but a few cents times how many wrong numbers or spams can add up to some nice income for Verizon. Do the people receiving these spams have to pay for them like I had to pay for that wrong number text? If so, do they get a refund now?
After paying my 10 cents for that unwanted wrong-number text sent to me, I blocked all text messages, from anyone and everyone. If Verizon had credited that dime, texting would still be possible on my phone, and they could still be making money off legitimate texts. They chose for it not to be possible to make money from texting on my phone.
I know I am being a bit picky but I would be even happier about this if I could get Verizon to give me the service I used to get from my previous provider.
Examples:
1) I received an important international call and my Verizon phone dropped it. I tried to call back, only to get a message saying I can't make international calls. I call the Verizon support to add international calling to my plan (already have unlimited data/etc). They told me that even though I paid my phone bill, because I signed up in the last 90 days they couldn't let me make international calls. Geez, thanks!
2) Anytime I try to download a ringtone or something like that from their website, my blackberry is not in their list of phones to download stuff for. I had the same model BB with my last provider and I downloaded ringtones effortlessly.
3) I have a ton of calls where when I answer, either the caller can't hear me or I can't hear them. We have to call each other 2-3 more times before we get a decent connection. This happens with many different ppl I call, including other Verizon phones.
I would avoid using Verizon. My two year contract is up this April and I am not going back. I have more dropped calls with them than I ever had with Sprint or Cingular. Worse still are the times when the calls don't even go through, or the person on the other end sounds like they've been smoking for 40 years. I have used 3 phones with their company and lived in two different states with the same problems.
I have decided that I am going to switch to Skype full time. (For my home solution) I am buying a new WiFi only phone to use on my wireless network, and will pay $28 for unlimited SkypeOut and $38 for SkypeIn for a year. Then I might buy a T-Mobile prepaid package for a year (for emergencies) and dump Verizon all-together.
I could probably save about $500 a year by doing that. I HATE VERIZON, worst customer service ever.
So Verizon charges its 100,000 users $10,000 to get spam text messages, then wins $200,000 from the company that sent the spam? Sounds like a win/win...for Verizon.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
On my Rogers plan, inbound text messages (up to 2000, i think) are included regardless of your plan. You are only charged for outgoing messages.
Does Verizon charge for inbound text messages? If so, how much?
If Verizon does not charge for inbound text messages, then they are entitled to that cash because spam has annoyed their customers (damaging customer relationships) and added to their over air bandwidth costs.
I don't get it... People get charged for receiving text messages in the US? That doesn't make sense to me. In my country, only the sender is charged and I rarely get spam.
The bottom line is: you should not be charged for something you can't choose not to receive. For instance, you can refuse to answer a phone call when you are in roaming mode if you don't want to pay, but you can't refuse to receive an undesired text message.
If incoming text messages were free in the US, then Verizon would have lost this lawsuit.
Every time one of this spammer's messages hit my phone I was charged $0.10, and verizon is pursuing damages?... seems like Verizon is double dipping a bit.
I wonder if they aren't "evil"!
They could allow a spammer to operate for a significant period of time, increasing revenue from those of us who don't have text messaging on our accounts. Then they shut him down, and get royalties. Finally they look good in everyones eyes, when in reality they made a decent chunk of change for no real work.
You can't tell me it's that difficult to determine where the messages came from... they probably could have shut him down sooner, but it wasn't worth the effort yet... mostly because they were not getting overwhelmed with calls to have text messaging charges dropped.
Hmm... I so hate to be one of those conspiracy theorists.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Texting in NZ is very cheap. It's free to receive and with most providers, $10 kiwi ($7 US) will allow you to send 500 SMS messages. Texting in NZ is far more popular than calling among the lower and middle class, especially in the teenage group, and because of this, both (yes, we have only two) service providers base a lot of their pre-pay and on-account plans around sending texts.
Even though SMS messages are so popular, the only advertising I ever receive is from my service provider advertising either cheaper rates or offering special deals. Obviously I can't speak for everybody, but if there was a well known spam issue with texts then I wouldn't be saying there isn't.
The two service providers we have are Telecom (former government-owned, largest company by value in NZ) and Vodafone. Neither are very reputable for being cheap; and I've never heard any complaints about people receiving spam. Text bullying is the biggest issue here in terms of SMS.
Verizon's market capitalization is just over 100 billion dollars, so 200k is a drop in the ocean in comparison with the company as a whole. I speculate that the company was trying to run SPaMaH out of business rather than trying to turn a profit.
bah.
I also get spam from time to time on my Cingular phone. Calling them to complain is basically a waste of time. Their "solution" is to disable receiving SMS for your phone number. I'm looking for a new carrier, but they are pretty much the only game in town if you want decent coverage AND a GSM phone so you can take it with you when you travel (I go to Asia a lot).
Guess which ISP is ranked as the world's worst by The Spamhaus Project, in terms of "the few networks who, out of corporate greed or mismanagement, choose to be part of the problem"?
r izon.com
http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/networks.lasso
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=ve
Before rushing to praise Verizon, consider that Verizon are knowingly and unrepentently hosting more of the world's hardcore spam operations than any other network, anywhere in the world.
another win for a company that has developed a reputation for going after spammers.
I had no idea anyone was under the impression that Verizon gave a shit about SMS spam.
I mean, I know that if you complain to customer service you can get a credit for text spam. But that's not what I need or want. I want a whitelist feature. Not the blacklist that they give you. With only like 15 entries possible. I want a simple whitelist; if it's not my alert server or my girlfriend or my best friend, I don't want the text message. You would think that that would be easy to do. A simple filter.
But after 3 years of asking, I still don't have it. So, I turned the whole feature off for my number. Now they don't get any money from me (My plan does not include a TXT allowance, so they could make a few dimes off of me).
In Nature, stupidity is a capital offense. In human society, too many get off with less than a warning.
just for all you flamers... Verizon Wireless (company in this article), is not Verizon (ISP/Telecom).
They split it off years ago and to this day VW has good customer service (at least on the west coast), and Verizon (ISP/Telecom) sucks.
Only $200,000 ?! Those amoral creeps should have been slapped for several billion!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
What to do? My time is not worth that phone call, but I'm bothered by the fact that I am paying money to Verizon for something that I shouldn't be paying for. What is worse is that apparently Verizon is making out on both ends - they received thousands of dollars in damages? OK, add all the dimes that people like me paid for spam text messages. Yeah, nice deal for Verizon and THEY look like the victim!
Has anyone bothered with reversing the charges from a spam? I've never bothered before, but after reading this article I'll be sure to call customer support the next time it happens.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...