FTC Goes After Scammers Who Blasted Millions of Text Messages

coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today said it has filed eight court cases to stop companies who have sent over 180 million illegal or deceptive text messages to all manner of mobile users in the past year. The messages — of which the FTC said it had received some 20,000 complaints in 2012 — promised consumers free gifts or prizes, including gift cards worth $1,000 to major retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and Target."

Comments

20,000+ people got a free lesson!

[sidevans]

free things don't require a credit card, unless its *only* to verify that you're over 18, then its totally trustworthy!

Re:20,000+ people got a free lesson!

[Anonymous Coward]

to be fair, the text is very similar to the message written at the bottom of all walmart reciepts.
the first time i recieved one i suspected it was fakse because no one has the number, i never fill out surveys, and i never shop at walmart. they were targeting people that are the exact opposite of me.

while i didn't know this until i went to walmart recently for the first time in years. the scam is preying on those that are poor enough to apply to the survey in hopes of winning and it is deliberately worded to imply that the reciever has won.

so go ahead and pat yourself on the back for outsmarting scammers, but please reslize that your smugness is completely unnecessary. the people that did get suckered into it had more pressing concerns, namely their life of poverty.

Re:20,000+ people got a free lesson!

[MrNJ]

You have cause and effect confused.

It's possible that "the poor" have no choice but to try desperate means to get out of poverty.
More likely they are in poverty because their pattern of bad decisions such as falling for the get-rich-quick scams.

Re:20,000+ people got a free lesson!

[MrNJ]

I was born in a poor country and came to the USA with little more than a bag of clothes.

My thankfulness goes only to my drive to work full time and study full time in a community college at the same time. That's the only reason I am not poor.
But don't let me keep you from fatalistic, lazy belief that poverty or prosperity are results of mere luck.

Re:20,000+ people got a free lesson!

[jimbolauski]

Poverty is a product of environment. Those that rise up out of a bad environment are the exception, not the norm. You should replace your smug arrogance with thankfulness that you were born into a better environment.

So all those professional athletes that are broke after a few years, how do you explain that? same with lottery winners that go broke. In 3rd world countries your cast dictates much of your future but not in modern countries like the US. You get a free High School education and if you have applied yourself in High School you can get a free College education too. I can't think of many people with a College education and an excellent work ethic that are not doing well for them selves, unless they have made other decisions in their life that are preventing them from being successful. The fact is that 95% of people's success depends on them the other 5% is where they came from.

All I want is my gift card.

[sylvandb]

I'm one of the complainers.

I complained about getting the spam, not that I paid and did not receive.

But I'll still settle for just my gift card.

What about the scammers

[Black Parrot]

who blasted millions of political robocalls last fall?

Re:What about the scammers

[Aryeh Goretsky]

Hello,

Were those the Political Opinions of America calls? If so, that's apparently a modified "boiler room" type scam where the goal is to get you to purchase a "free cruise" of the Bahamas out of Florida If you take them up on the offer, apparently you get stuck on a ferry and receive a bunch of high-pressure sales tactics to buy into a time share. Here are a couple of blog entries I wrote about them:

• Close call with a Caribbean cruise line scam
• Press One if by LAN, Two if by Sea

If you were the victim of such a scam, you might want to get in touch with this law firm who is looking into it.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

What I don't get is why scammers are tolerated.

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

I think the FBI should crack down on people scamming in general.

Look at free credit report, they bill your credit card even though they say it is free. They should be fined all their assets, shut down, and people who signed up with them refunded if that last part is possible.

Robo calls make me not want to own a phone at all. I get a couple each week, and they distract me from day. Today one woke me up. Robo calls should be illegal, including political robo calls.

There should be a way to disable text messages on phones. The phone company's dirty secret is that they over charge for text messages so they don't want to provide this service. Every time some spammer sends me scam bait, it costs me .10.

Phishers, and all those email scams should be looked into by the FBI too.

Look at the people who mail everyone who signs up for a webpage with a bill for their webpage making them think it comes from their webhost, but it is actually a scammer wanting money.

I'm pretty sure it always wasn't this way, but today, it seems like a large portion of incoming communication is from someone who wants to scam you. I can understand not being able to shut down some threats out of the country, but a lot of these things come from inside the country.

Re:What I don't get is why scammers are tolerated.

[Widowwolf]

"Look at free credit report, they bill your credit card even though they say it is free."


It is completely free, as long as you cancel within 7 days of getting your report..It says you get it free with the signup of their service, and you wouldn't be charged unless you forget to call and cancel..Right at top of the page


IMPORTANT INFORMATION When you order your $1 Credit Report and Score here, you will begin your 7-day trial membership in freecreditreport.com. If you don't cancel your membership within the 7-day trial period*, you will be billed $19.99 for each month that you continue your membership. You may cancel your trial membership anytime within the trial period without charge.

Re:What I don't get is why scammers are tolerated.

[bzipitidoo]

The one that I find weird is the "Windows Technical Support" scam. 3 times now I've had this kind of phone call in which a live person assures me that they've detected that my computer is infected. The 1st time, I strung him along a bit to see where it was leading. They want you to download and run some software from a particular website, which of course really will infect your computer.

The parts that amazed me were the sheer brazenness of the whole thing, and that evidently there's enough money to be made from infecting computers that it's worth paying call centers to have live people make thousands of attempts at this social engineering. They are so clearly, obviously criminal, yet they weren't shut down immediately. What of the much vaunted ability to track down copyright infringement, in order to empower 3 strikes laws? Are these operations really so hard to find and shut down? Must be, or Rachel from Cardholder Services would have been silenced years ago, though the criminality of that one wasn't as immediately obvious. I suppose it's to be expected that those who run call center operations have no scruples.

Re:What I don't get is why scammers are tolerated.

[richy freeway]

That's not the scam at all. The software they get you to download is some remote control software, usually legitimate. Something like Teamviewer or Logmein. They then proceed to show you all the "problems" in the event viewer and offer to sell you software and remote support (which you don't need).

I've had quite a few computers come through my workshop where a customer has fallen for this scam. Never found any viruses. The scam is them taking money off you for absolutely nothing. Whether or not they then resell the credit card details, I don't know. But I know that they take payments of anything upwards of £90.

Re:What I don't get is why scammers are tolerated.

[Threni]

> Every time some spammer sends me scam bait, it costs me .10.

I still don't understand why people use phone companies who charge you to receive spam. It just doesn't happen in the UK at all.

Surely the simplest way to prevent most of the stuff you mentioned is to defer payment for 3 months (from the phone companies to the spammers) so you have ample time to check and dispute items on your bill. Word would go out for other customers to check their bills, and if a company is found to be doing this wrongfully they'd simply not get paid by the phone company; the customer wouldn't have to do anything. Genuine companies can either wait the 3 months for their money, or find a different business model.

Re:What I don't get is why scammers are tolerated.

[jittles]

Uhh most companies will let you disable incoming and outgoing text messages right on your account management page of their website. And all of the US ones let you call and disable text messages at any time. So I'm not sure where you are pulling the SMS thing from, but its not true. You can definitely have it disabled.

Why couldn't Verizon and ATT just stop them?

[Todd Palin]

The messages I got were transparently bogus. Why couldn't Verizon and ATT just block the messages? Or perhaps the question is why wouldn't they stop them? Is it because they collected 20 cents from every message, times maybe many millions of messages? Well, they do collect from anyone without a text plan at least.

So the FTC's threshold is 180 million?

[Zadaz]

So that repeat robocall to my cell phone only needs to call 179 million more times before they'll take action.

Sounds reasonable.

[mosb1000]

What could possibly go wrong?

The law we need

[Skapare]

The law we need is one that provides a clear and accurate source of the message or phone call. It must identify the phone company that took the message or call from a customer, and also identify the customer, except in the few special cases the government allows blocking ID (never for commercial businesses). Any phone company failing to provide this identity accurately assumes all responsibility for every message or call made as if they made it themselves.

That's a good start.

[mark-t]

... now if they can only go after the people who seem to always spam me with text-message ads for "hookup" websites, which I am presuming are catering to people wanting to get lucky with somebody else local for them.

My wife has received 2 of these, and I've received 5 since the beginning of this year, each time from a different phone number, but always for the same website (each individual message claiming to be from a different person, however.)

Damn annoying, because we can't seem to do anything about it. At least we both have an unlimited text plan though, so it's not costing us any money. Still frustrating when you get a message and you think it's important and it turns out to be just spam, though.

Sunday morning texts

[Kasar]

Filling out all those federal complaint forms actually accomplished something? I just did it out of frustration and because I knew spam texts hadn't been legalized yet.
Marketers have to buy their legislation like everyone else.

Re:reply with your own gift

[jamesh]

When I get one of those, I reply with a text : " I have a gift for you.". Then I attach a picture of something fresh my dog laid in the yard.

Just a picture?

They'll get the job done...

[Rhys]

Just like the did for lowering my credit card rates with Rachiel. Or the asshat foghorn cruise captain. Or how my vehicle warranty is expiring.

This isn't a hard problem to solve. Mandate the phone companies build in a star-spam sequence you can fire during (or right after) a call to have that caller marked as spamming, just like gmail. Get so many complaints, phone company hands you over to FTC for investigation. Phone company doesn't hand them over and then when the FTC does get them, the fine is double (triple? 10x? Whatever factor needed to make it hurt) whatever the revenue from the scam was.

Not rocket science. But as long as the phone companies profit from the scammers, you better believe this will continue to be a problem.