WASHINGTON-A judge in New Jersey has granted Verizon Wireless a permanent injunction against Jacob Brown, a text-message spammer from Rhode Island.
“We got him and now he is permanently prevented from ever contacting our customers, and if he does, we will go back to the judge and have him held in contempt,” said Steven Zipperstein, Verizon Wireless general counsel.
Verizon Wireless first received a preliminary injunction against Brown in June after he sent 150,000 unsolicited commercial messages advertising mortgage loans, Ephedra and directing customers to adult Web sites to Verizon Wireless customers on June 16 and 70,000 more on June 19.
“This is a person who maliciously invaded the privacy of our customers,” Zipperstein told RCR Wireless News.
Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission said text messages were not covered by the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act but are covered by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s prohibition against using autodialers to call mobile phones. The FCC said that messages had to go through the Internet to be considered spam. Phone-to-phone text messages are not routed through the Internet.
Zipperstein said it didn’t matter whether Brown’s actions were covered by the Can Spam Act as long as they were considered illegal. “As a legal matter, the impact on the customer’s privacy is the same. The privacy is invaded by flooding their cell phone with unwanted messages.”
Verizon Wireless filed two lawsuits last year against spammers in Georgia. Zipperstein did not say whether additional suits were planned.
“Our hope is that spammers are going to hear loud and clear that our company is committed to protecting customer’s privacy and will go to any length to do so including bringing the full weight of the law down on these guys,” said Zipperstein.
Customers who are spammed can call customer service to be credited, said Jeffrey Nelson, Verizon Wireless executive director of communications. In addition, the vtext.com Web site allows users to block unwanted addresses.
