Facebook Settles Text Messaging Suit Even If It Probably Didn't Need To
from the less-of-a-hassle dept
Back in October we pointed to a totally pointless lawsuit against Facebook from a woman who blamed the company because her mobile phone was getting text messages from Facebook against her wishes. The problem with the lawsuit, however, was that it wasn't Facebook's fault, as the reason the woman was getting the errant text messages was because she had received a new phone number. The previous owner of the number had signed up to receive the text messages, and they carried over to the new subscriber. There's no doubt that this could be quite annoying and upsetting to the woman, but it's hard to see how Facebook really should have known about it or could be seen as the party liable here -- so it appeared to be yet another lawsuit where someone targets a hot company just because it's a hot company. In this case, though, it appears to have worked. Facebook has agreed to settle the lawsuit and pay the legal fees of the plaintiff, while also agreeing to make it easier to stop such text messages and working with mobile operators to learn about recycled numbers. While Facebook probably had a decent chance of winning the case, from a PR/user relations standpoint it probably made sense to settle and do everything possible to make this less of a problem.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: class action, recycled numbers, text messaging
Companies: facebook
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Not Facebook's Fault..
Obviously, the new person didn't know about the 90 day standard before re-assigning a new number, or maybe this requirement was limited to only a few companies.
Or possibly, Facebook didn't know about the 90 day FCC requirement.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not Facebook's Fault..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Not Facebook's Fault..
I hate this too. So how do we deal with this? There's a 90 day FCC restriction on reassigning numbers. It's quite annoying that telemarkerters don't follow these rules.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Not Facebook's Fault..
With 99% of these services, if you text "unsubsribe" or "stop" or something like that back to the message and you will be removed from the service. I guess it was easier for this person to sue than to send a text message.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Not Facebook's Fault..
How do you send text from a landline?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't piss off Iron Chef.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't piss off Iron Chef.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Geez, Mike. You need to get a few good programmers or something.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Need the details
Social sites like facebook are internet toilets anyway
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Facebook was not profiting from the messages
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
She filed a lawsuit, got some bad PR for Facebook, incurred some legal fees. Then Facebook fixes the problem and pays her legal fees.
Something seems wrong here, couldn't they have just fixed the problem in the first place?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thoughts...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]