[HN Gopher] I won a suit against a party that sent me an unsolic...
___________________________________________________________________
I won a suit against a party that sent me an unsolicited text
message
Author : MrDunham
Score : 114 points
Date : 2022-07-28 14:39 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| hash872 wrote:
| I would love to do this, but the few times that I've tried to
| look up the company, there's no real evidence as to who it is.
| And I'm fairly sophisticated at that kind of research, I know
| most of the tricks- however, these companies do successfully hide
| their identity.
|
| I did, one time, find the _likely_ CEO of one of these companies,
| and I called his cell phone late on a Friday night to mess with
| him. However, I didn 't really have 'rises to the level of
| evidence that you could present in court' type certainty
| 300bps wrote:
| This part is actually pretty simple.
|
| You simply keep responding that you're interested. Click their
| link. Fill out their form. Eventually you'll get to a real
| person at a real company that was benefiting from the illegal
| spam.
| dweekly wrote:
| (OP here) In this case the spam text linked to a legit website
| that clearly belonged to a CA business, which then I was able
| to find on the CA SoS business search website. I've also found
| that Terms of Service & Privacy Policy pages usually have a
| legal address for a company and email for legal concerns.
| thathndude wrote:
| Lawyer here. I do this kind of work for a client. Good for this
| guy for taking the fight to the spammers. As we head into
| election season, a lot of us are going to get unsolicited text
| messages like this. You too can sue for them!
|
| Some of what was said in the tweets regarding your rights and
| what you have to do to file a claim are, in my experience and
| opinion, not correct.
|
| The general idea is right, but some of the asides about the law
| were simply incorrect.
|
| Depending on your jurisdiction, the way you can pursue a case
| like this is going to vary, so I'm not going to give any hard and
| fast rules in this comment.
|
| Just a heads up that if you want to try to replicate this, your
| steps will probably be different.
|
| Not legal advice :)
| [deleted]
| YeBanKo wrote:
| He mentioned the exact jurisdiction where it happened. Can you
| point at least one thing, that is wrong?
| dweekly wrote:
| OP here. I'm definitely not a lawyer, so apologies for
| incorrect statements made in the thread. I'd love to learn more
| about correct framing / case history / rights here to avoid
| sharing misinformation. If you'd rather provide the feedback
| privately / off-the-record, my email is david at weekly dot
| org. Thank you!
| 300bps wrote:
| The only thing that I noticed was not 100% correct is:
|
| _5. [..] courts will seize from them what you are owed_
|
| The process to get a court to do this is extremely difficult.
| It often starts with Debtor Examination followed by filing a
| bunch of documents to start the seizing process. If the
| person really doesn't want to pay the judgement though, good
| luck. For example, during the Debtor Examination they have to
| answer truthfully under oath where their bank accounts and
| other property are. And then as soon as the meeting is over
| they can move to a different bank.
|
| Getting a judgement is the easy part. Collecting it is the
| hard part.
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-is-debtor-
| exami...
| 1nd1ansumm3r wrote:
| So you were able to sue, for example Google or Qualtrics because
| a spammer sent you one of their links? I'm confused on that part.
| Or did the legit company reveal the identity of the spammer to
| you? Seems like the case would get tossed because the entity
| you're suing didn't send the spam? How did that part work? Thanks
| andrewljohnson wrote:
| To what extent can this be automated? There are apps to fight
| parking/speeding tickets... could the same be done for little
| lawsuits to sue spammers?
|
| Maybe a lawyer could comment on feasibility of this.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| I think a much easier way would be if we just taxed phone calls
| at 1 cent each. I mean absolutely everything else is already
| taxed: you pay taxes just to stay alive. the least that could be
| done is add a 1 cent tax to each phone call, just enough to stop
| the mass phone calling.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| And then after it was implemented we'd get political reasons
| why it still isn't implemented. No thanks. I also don't want
| people legally spamming me for a penny.
| anubiskhan wrote:
| "Judge in LOCATION blocks new phone tax"
| MarkMarine wrote:
| These calls are already illegal. There is a Do not call list.
| The gov has just been completely inept at enforcement, I don't
| think we need extra tax, just enforce the laws we have.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The point is that, if there is a per-call cost that everybody
| has to pay, it becomes much harder for spammers to justify
| automatically calling hundreds of thousands of numbers per
| day, while regular people who make one or two calls a day
| won't notice.
|
| "enforcing the laws we have" isn't enough because spoofing
| exists and many of the spammers operate across borders.
| flerchin wrote:
| Yep, and folks could even have a credit of 500 phone calls a
| month, or whatever a reasonable number would be, so no cost to
| consumers at all. Instead of a tax, it should be a minimum
| charge that goes to the carriers. So that they would be
| incentivized to collect it.
| aliqot wrote:
| You and the guy above you are part of a larger problem that
| we have. Stop doing stuff like this, stop proposing it too.
|
| I don't carry a phone, and find people obsessed with them
| annoying, but it doesnt mean we should go throwing limits on
| ourselves out of fear for what others may do to us. TSA was a
| mistake.
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| That escalated quickly
| eli wrote:
| An impractical and difficult to implement idea that would have
| terrible unintended consequences.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| In Germany, any company telling you that you won something is
| required to provide that prize. Unfortunately, the scams I get
| tend to be from abroad, and/or the actors behind them impossible
| to identify (and they also often use vague language like
| "potentially won" or "won one of our prizes" vs. "YOU WON A BRAND
| NEW TESLA CYBERTRUCK").
| adoxyz wrote:
| Winning a lawsuit and actually collecting are two different
| things, and from my experience the legal system does not care at
| all once they've issued a judgement. It worked out for that
| person and that's great, but these types of lawsuits tend to take
| a while to get a hearing, require a bunch of paperwork, and if
| the other party does not play ball, the odds of you getting any
| $$ out of it are pretty slim.
| dweekly wrote:
| (OP here) I'm learning that in this case I was lucky that the
| party was A: identifiable, B: also in CA, C: responsive to a
| suit, and D: willing to settle out-of-court (mailed me a
| check). I hadn't realized that collections of a small claims
| judgement could be super-involved but apparently I was simply
| naive on that topic.
| sethjr5rtfgh wrote:
| toddm wrote:
| Not all heroes wear capes.
| cbron wrote:
| Has anyone tried this with real estate solicitors ? I get a
| message per day about selling my house.
| cronix wrote:
| Only 1? I get at least 6 unsolicited texts and 3-4 phone calls
| every damn day.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I get around 60 calls a day, many of them are repeat
| attempts. T-Mobile's app blocks 99% of them. I get around a
| dozen texts a day for the real estate nonsense. Messenger
| does a good job of marking those as spam.
|
| I've tried a number of times to get identifiable information
| from those folks with little success. Friend of mine went
| through the process and met with someone on site at the
| property he was contacted about. He first had to let them
| send an inspector. The inspector was paid by a proxy which
| was not linked to the company that wanted to buy the
| property. The person he met with on site representing the
| property buyer was a lawyer, and that's who he had to go
| after. He ended up getting the $1500 after all of that
| effort, and told me the lawyer laughed and said the cost was
| just passed onto his client. It was a lot of effort.
| d23 wrote:
| My only question is around the loophole that political
| organizations can do this if they aren't using "robotexts". How
| do they prove this? I've received three texts from an
| organization I'd like to do this to. Every time they've messaged
| me, I've responded and asked whether this was a human sending the
| message. No response.
|
| Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and try.
| devmunchies wrote:
| If I receive spam message almost daily for 2 years, and I've
| contacted the platform (competitor to Twilio) and they said they
| took care of it (nope!), then I assume the platform could be
| liable too, no?
| [deleted]
| lazzlazzlazz wrote:
| This only works for the least common kind of a spammer: a real,
| registered business that you can identify. Most spammers are con
| artists, scammers, and phishers who know to keep their identities
| secret, let alone link you to their corporate website.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > You're agreeing to not sue them again for the exact same
| violation.
|
| I hope exact violation means that particular unsolicited text
| message and not the exact violation of sending unsolicited text
| messages.
| cdot2 wrote:
| yes it means the same text message
| jonpurdy wrote:
| When I lived in Canada, I was very excited when CASL (Canada's
| Anti-Spam Legislation) came out circa 2013. Having the ability to
| sue Canadian companies that ignored email opt-outs would have
| been great. The amounts are limited to $200 per violation, but up
| to $1 million per day total (in most cases, I'd get a few hundred
| dollars for 1-3 emails). And very easy to track since I generate
| unique aliases for each company I interact with.
|
| Unfortunately, the ability for individuals to sue ("private right
| of action") was delayed in 2017, and delayed once more in 2019,
| IIRC. Apparently, companies complained that the max $1 million
| per day could be achieved by sending 5,000 unsolicited emails,
| which would be too easy to do if there was a mistake in their
| system or a new sales rep ham-fisted this without realizing the
| repercussions.
|
| I love to see posts like this though, I'll be sure to attempt
| this if I ever get SMS spam here in USA.
| game-of-throws wrote:
| "We are likely to break this law, therefore we shouldn't be
| punished when it happens"? Classic.
|
| The US has a similar problem with CAN-SPAM. Ordinary citizens
| cannot sue.[1] All you can do is complain to the FTC, after
| which of course nothing will happen.
|
| It makes these laws rather toothless if they're not actually
| enforced.
|
| [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/inbox/can-
| spam_and_consumer_...
| kemayo wrote:
| Unfortunately, all of the text spam I get is of the scammy
| misrepresentation variety, and is going to fail on the "identify
| the other party" step.
|
| Edit: for instance https://imgur.com/D780jAX -- after I naively
| responded to the first few like this and got their pivot, I
| started to recognize the style.
| sethjr5rtfgh wrote:
| I get those as well. Did you find out who's sending them?
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| There was an article about this phenomenon not too long ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949731
|
| Just a plain old scam attempt.
| splitrocket wrote:
| If you spend a few minutes and get them on the phone and say "I
| want to wire you funds right now!", they will give you a bank
| account.
| eli wrote:
| Maybe you'd get a bank account but it wouldn't actually be
| theirs.
| sethjr5rtfgh wrote:
| Do you know that or are you guessing?
|
| Because my guess is it won't be that simple.
| paulgb wrote:
| Yeah, my guess is they would say "oh, we can just do an ACH
| debit and save you the trouble. What's _your_ account
| number?"
| mistersquid wrote:
| The punchline is a link in the last tweet of the thread: a non-
| affiliate link to OP's acquaintance's kit to file a lawsuit of
| your own. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.isipp.com/how-to-make-phone-and-sms-spammers-
| pay...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-28 17:00 UTC)