FTC Shuts Down Text Messaging Spammers

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Text message spam is increasingly becoming a nuisance, but it’s also illegal if you don’t give the company permission to text you. Thankfully, the Federal Trade Commission is stepping in to protect consumers.

In just one example, the FTC asked a federal judge recently to shut down an operation that allegedly blasted consumers with millions of illegal spam text messages at a “mind boggling” rate, including many messages that deceptively advertised a mortgage modification website called “Loanmod-gov.net.” The website was intentionally designed to appear to be a government web address and claimed to provide “Official Home Loan Modification and Audit Assistance Information,” the FTC said.

According to the FTC’s complaint, Phillip A. Flora, the defendant behind the text message spamming operation, sent millions of text messages pitching loan modification assistance, debt relief and other services. In one 40-day period, Flora sent more than 5.5 million spam text messages, a “mind boggling” rate of about 85 per minute, every minute of every day, according to court documents.

The FTC alleges in the text spam lawsuit that consumers lose money as a result of Flora’s spam text messaging because many of them get stuck paying fees to their mobile carriers to receive the unwanted text messages. The agency also alleges Flora collected information from consumers who responded to the text messages – even those asking him to stop sending messages – and then sold their contact information to marketers claiming they are “debt settlement leads.”

The FTC charges that Flora violated the FTC Act by sending unsolicited commercial text messages to consumers, and by misrepresenting that he was affiliated with a government agency. The agency further charges Flora with violating the CAN-SPAM Act by advertising his text message blasting services by sending consumers email spam. According to the FTC, this email spam failed to include a way for consumers to “opt out” of future messages and failed to include the physical mailing address of the sender, as required by law.

We’ve reported on numerous text message spam class action lawsuits and settlements in the last year, including a Domino’s Pizza text message class action lawsuit and class action settlements over Burger King text ads and Robots DVD text ads. Consumers who feel they are victims of multiple unwanted and illegal text advertisements are encouraged to contact a lawyer.

Updated March 3rd, 2010