Cell phone spam debacle

[Dresden]

This morning I was jerked out of deep sleep by a text message from my stepfather, which was odd, and it stated:

FWD: God says "The struggle is over for you" (Mark 11:25-26). If you believe this, forward to 10 people. Don't ignore. He could be testing you!

Later on I called my mother and asked why I had received what sounded like the spam you read on Youtube's comments section from her husband. She laughed and said that it was sent to him by a number unknown and they thought it would be funny to send it to me. Now I'm a Sprint customer and this concept is completely alien to me, but what's the point of this crap? The most inconvenient part about this story is it reminds me of when I would get phone calls at least once a week from obscure locations all across the United States only to have a message in Spanish relayed to me. How is this crap legal? Who's behind this nonsense?

 

[Zaphod]

Huh? You're mad at your provider, the law, and whoever because a member of your family sent you a text message? Sorry, but that's a bit like ranting at the post-office for getting a plain old-fashioned chain letter back in the day.

As far as the merit of the rant regarding phone annoyances in general goes: I feel your pain. Luckily, I live somewhere where 'free enterprise' doesn't have the right to piss you off at their leisure: Automated messages are illegal, mass dialings (call 20 numbers a pop to save time at the callcentre - annoy the slower 19) are illegal, and all callcentres has to wash their lists against a 'block' registry every three months (with penalties that mostly makes it not worth it for them to disregard).

 

[Dresden]

Huh? You're mad at your provider, the law, and whoever because a member of your family sent you a text message? Sorry, but that's a bit like ranting at the post-office for getting a plain old-fashioned chain letter back in the day.

As far as the merit of the rant regarding phone annoyances in general goes: I feel your pain. Luckily, I live somewhere where 'free enterprise' doesn't have the right to piss you off at their leisure: Automated messages are illegal, mass dialings (call 20 numbers a pop to save time at the callcentre - annoy the slower 19) are illegal, and all callcentres has to wash their lists against a 'block' registry every three months (with penalties that mostly makes it not worth it for them to disregard).

The law? My family? I don't know how you interpreted what I posted, but it's wrong. Well the first half anyway. My question is how are companies allowed to send the cell phone equivilant of a popup to certain providers, while my provider, never actually sent me, in text format anyway, anything like this? Literally this is the first time I've ever even witnessed something of this nature. How are these people getting our phone numbers? That hits home in terms of my aforementioned series of phone calls I received. It's bothersome because phone calls don't necessarily wind up costing you any additional money, they're more inconvenient, whereas a text message can, depending on your plan.

 

[Zaphod]

My question is how are companies allowed to send the cell phone equivilant of a popup

Who's talking about 'companies'. You said that your family "thought it would be funny to send it to [you]". Your story does not relate what unknown party sent it to them, but (sadly) there are enough people in this world to propagate religious spam for whatever reason.

However, if we assume that it was originally sent from a company by an automated process to a large number of 'random' recipients, that would be illegal here. I'm not sure about the status of the law in the 'annex of existence'.

 

[Dresden]

Who's talking about 'companies'. You said that your family "thought it would be funny to send it to [you]". Your story does not relate what unknown party sent it to them, but (sadly) there are enough people in this world to propagate religious spam for whatever reason.

However, if we assume that it was originally sent from a company by an automated process to a large number of 'random' recipients, that would be illegal here. I'm not sure about the status of the law in the 'annex of existence'.

I seem to remember asking about the people who send these types of messages regardless of whether or not it directly effects me or not. Fortunately my provider does a pretty good job of blocking this type of crap out completely, in text format anyway. I was merely setting up the scenario by mentioning the origins of the text. I'm certain I wouldn't even be privy to the very existences of these nuisances provided one didn't show up at my doorstep, and I don't think it's very helpful to pore over whatever inconsistencies you're deriving from the way I construed the question.

I live in Massachusetts.

 

[Zaphod]

Well, your original post basically reads: "My stepfather sent me a religious chainletter via SMS: How is this legal?" I was honestly confused as to the intent of the post since religious spam are mostly spread by people. Sorry for the derailing.

On the other hand, now that you clarified, I'd be interested in knowing the legal status regarding text message spam and other tele(marketing) annoyances in the US too. In general, I'd tend to think that such activities are illegal, but that the size of each individual crime, US adversity to regulation, and coordination issues regarding different levels of government can make it both lucrative and relatively low-risk. Some years ago, mobile spam and scams were a hot issue in much of Europe as well, but as far as I can tell, steep penalties and proactive regulation seems to have weeded the problem out to a large extent.

 

[RussSchultz]

For what its worth, traveling in Europe with a GSM phone is really irritating because I get all sorts of "HELLO! WELCOME TO OUR NETWORK!" text messages everywhere I go.

Most irritating when sleeping on an overnight boat/train and traveling through several providers' territories.

 

[Rys]

Isn't that why phones offer a silent mode, and granular options for alerts?