AT&T,
T-Mobile, and Sprint have pledged to stop charging for spam or
"premium" texts.The announcement was made by Vermont Attorney General
Bill Sorrell, who has been working with dozen of other state AGs to stop
mobile cramming, or unauthorized third-party charges that pop up on
mobile users' bills.That includes text-based weather alerts, sports
score alerts, daily jokes, horoscopes, trivia, and subscriptions that
enable monthly downloads, like 10 ringtones or wallpapers per month.As
part of a deal worked out with Sorrell's office, three of nation's
biggest carriers will no longer charge for commercial Premium Short
Messaging Services (PSMS), which the AG said makes up the majority of
third-party charges on cell phones and the "overwhelming majority" of
cramming complaints."While PSMS has some benefits, like charitable
giving, it is also a major contributor to the current mobile cramming
problem," Sorrell said in a statement. "We are pleased that AT&T,
Sprint and T-Mobile have decided to stop the flow of money from the
pockets of ordinary people to the bank accounts of scam artists. We're
hopeful the other carriers will soon follow their lead."In a statement,
Verizon Wireless general counsel William B. Peterson said that "while we
don't agree with all of the Attorney General's allegations, we respect
his efforts in this area."
"For
years, Verizon has been vigilant in protecting our customers from bad
actors. There have been numerous times we have terminated programs and
in some cases have taken aggressive legal action in order to ensure our
customers were protected," Peterson continued. "Since premium messaging
was first introduced,cc composite technology advances and smartphone adoption have dramatically changed the way customeBOPP tapers
access information."Verizon already decided to stop supporting PSMS due
to the "improper conduct" of third parties, and "we are in the process
of winding down our premium messaging business," Peterson said. "Verizon
will, however, continue to support text-to-donate for charitable
programs and text-to-contribute for political campaigns that use this
technology."AT&T and T-Mobile will also continue to allow charitable
donations to be billed via PSMS. "Sprint was unable to confirm if they
will do so at this time," Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said
in his own statement, but a Sprint spokeswoman said later that "we do
expect charitable giving SMS to remain available for our customers."
"Despite
protections and processes put in place by T-Mobile and the industry,
not all premium text message (SMS) vendors have acted responsibly,"
T-Mobile said in a note on its website. "After careful evaluation of the
program, T-Mobile is now in the process of protecting our customers
from being billed for premium SMS services - except for charitable and
political giving - as soon as possible, with as little impact as
possible to our customers."Standard text-messaging programs, like voting
for American Idol, will not be impacted by the change, T-Mobile
said.According to AG Sorrell, cell phone cramming on landlines and cell
phones costs Americans about $2 billion per year. A May report from his
office found that 60 percent of third-party charges on the mobile phone
bills of Vermonters were unauthorized.vacuum bottleBack
in 2011, the Federal Communications Commission formally unveiled rules
to combat phone cramming, and in April, the Federal Trade Commission
filed its first case against phone crammers who added bogus charges to
users' mobile phone bills.But it didn't stop there. Just yesterday, the
FTC announced a nearly $11 million settlement with an Atlanta-based
company that spammed cell phones with unauthorized texts, resulting in
more than $10 million in unwanted charges.
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