Court Treats SMS Spam Like Telemarketing Call

from the pick-a-law dept

Wed, Oct 19th 2005 11:39am — Carlo Longino

The Arizona Court of Appeals ruled last month that unsolicited SMS messages fall under the rule of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, deciding they constitute an auto-dialed call to a cell phone, which is prohibited. The TCPA, put in place well before legislators had any idea text messages even existed, has been used before by carriers to try and stop SMS spam, like Verizon, which used it to sue some spammers last year. The company in the suit also argued that the CAN SPAM Act pre-empted the TCPA in matters of unsolicited messages, though the court disagreed. Two points on that note: first, CAN SPAM covers emails sent to mobile phones, which these messages were, making the argument moot; second, isn't it great that CAN SPAM providers spammers with ways to defend what they do?

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Ben McNelly, 19 Oct 2005 @ 1:28pm

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Yes, it's great that CAN SPAM provides spammers with ways to defend what they do.
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Igor, 8 Feb 2009 @ 4:43pm

Revenge on spamers.
There is a way to track down where the message originated and then have them billed, or a friendly visit from lets call me an alias, MR.Baseballbat

You call your provider and make them tell you Who sent the message, you are entitled to this information.

Im personally imagining me, a baseball bat.. some greedy fella opening a door... and I see in the back round a nice expensive computer......yes....

Or some guy in Africa who will do whatever you want to whoever you want for a few dollars (think of the savings from not recieving just a few sms messages from him/her?). every country has this =)) service.
Think of this service as an investment.
OH be shure you have them billed!, for every sms you ever recieved =))
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