The fight against mobile spam isn’t being taken lightly. And those who unlawfully push SPAM to mobile devices are being taken to task and, increasingly, brought to justice.
In recent days, a multitude of defendants were compelled to pay more than $9 million to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission related to a text messaging and robocall scam targeted at millions of Americans.
The SPAM in question peddled erroneous scams, most of which involved “free offers” that ultimately brought with them nothing other than unauthorized charges to mobile accounts.
“The operators of this scam bombarded consumers for months with deceptive text messages offering ‘free’ items, but the costs to consumers were very real – including the misuse of their personal information to cram unwanted charges on their phone bills,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “I am pleased that these scammers will be forced to turn over millions of the dollars they took from consumers and banned from repeating these actions in the future.”
Representatives for the FTC, along with the Federal Communications Commission, say they are committed to hunting down and pursuing those who fail to abide by federal laws prohibiting unsolicited commercial messages being broadcast or distributed to wireless devices.