Verizon Wireless Sues Text Spammers

I-VEST Global Corporation and a number of "John Does" are the target of a lawsuit brought by Verizon Wireless, according to a Verizon press release. The lawsuit accuses Global Corp of sending unsolicited commercial text messages, otherwise known as wireless spam, to millions of Verizon customers.

Filed in U.S. District Court in Trenton, NJ, the lawsuit claims that, beginning in April 2007, more than 12 million text messages offering stocks and real estate for sale have been sent to Verizon Wireless Customers. Verizon Wireless has filters and network monitoring in place to stop unwanted text messages, and according to the company press release, only 5,000 text messages made it through to Verizon subscribers.

Steven E. Zipperstein, vice president and general counsel of Verizon Wireless, said, "While in this case, we were able to block most of the messages from reaching our customers' handsets, even one unwanted text message is one too many. Verizon Wireless is committed to using our legal and technical resources to the fullest extent on behalf of our customers to uncover and stop the companies and individuals that engage in wireless spam." The lawsuit claims that Global Corp violated the Federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act in addition to state fraud and privacy laws. Verizon Wireless is asking the court for a permanent injection and monetary damages.

This lawsuit does not mark the first time that Verizon Wireless has battled wireless spammers. In recent years, Verizon Wireless has won permanent injunctions over companies that have sent wireless spam in addition to those who made illegal telemarketing calls to Verizon customers.

According to Verizon Wireless, 22.3 billion text messages were exchanged in its network in the first quarter of 2007, up 4.6 billion from the final quarter of 2006. With such a high volume of messages sent daily, wireless spam places an addition strain on the messaging system, and because a large number of commercial messages are often sent in a short amount of time, the overall performance of the wireless network can be compromised.