SMS (Short Message Service) text messaging is yet to catch on as big here in the U.S. as it is elsewhere. And, if one reader's recent experience with SMS spam proves typical, it isn't likely to do so.
"I get a dozen or so spam SMS messages a day on my cell phone from a San Diego company called Sms.ac," the reader wrote. "It is annoying as hell. I imagine they are supposed to whet my interest in the Sms.ac service. Instead, it is raising my blood pressure at the thought of paying for all those SMS messages, not to mention that each one also makes my phone ring."
The reader sent me samples of the messages he'd received from Sms.ac, and annoying is a mild way of describing them. Even if they didn't cost the recipient a few pennies apiece, having your day interrupted by such a stream of crude jokes, bizarre factoids, and come-ons for the company's chat and dating services could drive anybody crazy.
The reader was all the more frustrated when he went to www.sms.ac (in case you're wondering, .ac is the TLD for Ascension Island - consult your atlas) to find a way to turn off the unwanted text messages. Not having ever signed up with Sms.ac, and therefore having no logon name or password to delete his "account," he couldn't even find a way to complain about the text message spams. What he did find, however, was the Sms.ac terms of service saying he could receive messages from Sms.ac or its users at any time and that just entering a page of the Sms.ac site constituted acceptance of the TOS. "So just by hitting their web page, you've agreed according to the sneakwrap to be spammed forever without recourse," the reader noted.
Just as with the e-mail spammers who always claim that you somehow signed up to receive their junk, the reader doesn't how he can prove he never signed up to receive Sms.ac's text messages. "I never gave my cell phone SMS number to anyone except the Washington, D.C. subway service outage alert system," he says. "I don't know how they got it, but I assume it would be trivial to war-spam a block of cell phone numbers."
But hold on here. Surely this type of SMS spam violates the Can-Spam Act, the Do Not Call list, or even the old Telephone Consumer Protection Act, doesn't it? Well, unfortunately, probably not. The FCC just issued its mobile phone ruling authorized by the Can-Spam Act, and it appears to permit SMS spam. (Gee, what does that make the score under the Can-Spam Act now -- something like Spammers: 100, Public Good: 0?) And, under all these laws, if the marketing weasels claim that you "agreed" to receive their communications, you have to prove differently. And, in the sneakwrapped world we've created for ourselves, the very act of complaining about such communications can be deemed your acceptance to receive more of the same.
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12:21:58 AM 
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