Verizon Wireless has sued a spammer for sending millions of unsolicited SMS messages to its subscribers, despite the legal ambiguity of such "spam".

US mobile carrier Verizon Wireless has filed suit against one Jacob Brown and 50 unidentified individuals, alleging that the defendants sent over 4.7 million unsolicited commercial text messages to Verizon Wireless subscribers.

The suit alleges that Brown and his co-defendants sent unsolicited advertisements to its subscribers advertising ephedra, mortgages, detective software, sexual improvement pills, and similar products. The 4.7 million messages were sent to customers in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island. Although Verizon employes spam filtering software on its text message servers, it says that about one million such messages managed to slip through anyway. Verizon is seeking an injunction against the defendants as well as damages.

Laws regarding mobile phone spam in the United States are still unclear. The CAN-SPAM Act, which passed by the US Congress and went into effect on 1 January of this year, instructs the Federal Communications Commission to create rules to protect users against unwanted messages on mobile devices, but such rules are not yet in place and will not be until 26 September. Therefore, Verizon is filing suit under the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which predates modern mobile phones, on the grounds that SMS spamming software should be considered an "automatic telephone dialing system", which is illegal. The suit also claims that the defendants faked retur address information on their unsolicited messages, a practice that is extremely common among e-mail spammers.

Mobile phone spam has become an increasingly large problem in parts of the world that make heavier user of mobile phones, but is not yet an epidemic in the United States the way e-mail spam is. Nonetheless, it is still a problem. Many carriers have taken to employing spam filtering software, while Verizon in particular blocks abot 50,000 text message spams per day.

     Legal Issues in Mobile     

2004
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2003
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Mobile Phone whilst driving ban commences in the UK
"No cell phones" sticker now trademarked
Warning That Bluetooth Class I devices pose hacking & security risk
Anti-spam laws now in force in the UK ban unsolicited SMS
South Korea Clamps Down on SMS Spam
Tackling worldwide trade in stolen mobiles
New GSM Jammer Looks Like a GSM Cellphone
Sangyo 360 degree surveilance camera working with 3G phones
Bizarre Jamming Of Moldova GSM Network
Camera phones a threat to industrial secrets
US tower firm fined over safety violations
Mobile Phone whilst driving ban commences in the UK
Lawsuit over GSM network seizure in Cote d'Ivoire
African GSM Operators Create Mobile Phone EIR Blacklist
Woman suffers facial burns from cell phone
Nigerian Regulator  Sets Up Arbitration Panels Over GSM Complaints
Calif. bans mobile phone spam
Security Concerns Still Slowing Mobile App Deployment
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GSM Association sets its sights on spamming globally
Vodafone to clamp down on SMS Spam
GSM Jammer Security Device saved Pakistan's president
Worlds First Mobile Spyphone Launched
EU moves against illegal and harmful content online
Korean Government Admits Developing Anti-Tapping
South Korea to introduce tougher Location laws