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Editorial: A failure to enforce spam texts

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//August 20, 2012//

Editorial: A failure to enforce spam texts

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//August 20, 2012//

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A Federal Trade Commission spokeswoman had one telling comment to explain the agency’s fight against illegal spam texts.

“The FTC might investigate for any wide variety of reasons,” Claudia Farrell said. “We don’t feel we have to disclose those reasons, even to reporters. And our investigations themselves are nonpublic.”

Best to refuse unequivocally when your answer would incriminate you and your colleagues.

It’s a small but crucial point that Farrell mixes up her allegiances, choosing to protect the FTC rather than the people the agency serves. But the FTC, to the frustration of the texting public, is not protecting the people who really need it.

Most unsolicited texts have been illegal since 2009. Still, an estimated 4.5 billion of them went out in 2011.

The spam texts primarily come from two sources: legitimate companies or smishers, a label of murky origin and elusive logic given to those who lure people to websites to steal their personal information.

Class-action lawyers are fighting the legitimate companies and should stamp out the majority of their spam texts. Even if a company wins in court, nothing says bad marketing like being the target of a class-action lawsuit.

Smishers are more devious. They run a numbers game that has nothing to do with market shares or consumer contacts. They blast out millions of illegal texts, waiting for that one sucker who can’t resist the promise of instant gratification.

From there, it doesn’t take much to max out a credit card or drain a bank account.

The class-action lawyers are leaving smishers to the FTC. The agency isn’t up to the fight. In fact, it isn’t even in the ring.

FTC attorney Christine Todaro and Farrell said the agency received 2,600 spam text complaints in 2011. They did not have a number of complaints for the years prior or for 2012. The FTC, they said, doesn’t usually tally up complaints or track the trends.

The agency in 2011, in its only text spam prosecution, reached a settlement with a smisher who in 40 days sent out about 5.5 million texts advertising a scam mortgage modification website. The FTC, clearly flexing its muscles, squeezed the smisher for $32,000 and a promise not to do it again.

That must have consoled anyone desperate enough to have fallen for that scam.

But there are countless other text cons preying on plenty of other people who would not know where to turn for help or justice.

Those are the people the FTC is failing. Government is supposed to do things for people who can’t do things for themselves.

If Farrell chose to expand on that one comment, she could argue the FTC has done something for those people.

Once.

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