The Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday that it had recently filed eight lawsuits in federal courts around the country against companies it accused of ordering or engineering the sending of hundreds of millions of spam text messages to mobile phone users, Edward Wyatt reports on Friday in The New York Times.
The messages, which typically promise gift cards to national chain stores or other prizes, are sent to random phone numbers and usually direct recipients to a Web site where they are asked for personal information like Social Security numbers or credit card numbers, agency officials said.
Rarely, if ever, do consumers receive any actual reward, said C. Steven Baker, the commission?s Midwest region director. Instead, the Web sites often take users through multiple screens that ask them for more detailed information or entice them to sign up for free trials of products, then charge them for shipping and handling.
Roughly 60 percent of mobile phone users have received one or more spam text messages in the last year, he said, and about 15 percent clicked on the link included in the message. The cellphone spam industry has proved lucrative because individuals have grown to trust their mobile devices in a way that they do not trust e-mail.
In the eight federal civil cases filed across the country in recent days, the F.T.C. named 29 defendants, including 18 individuals, most of whom worked for companies that were hired to send the text messages. One complaint was filed against the operators of one of the Web sites to which consumers were directed by the messages.
Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/daily-report-government-takes-legal-action-over-phone-spam/
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