[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)