Mythbusters' Adam Savage Discovers Insane Roaming Fees: $11,000 iPhone Bill For A Few Hours Surfing

from the BUSTED dept

Every few months or so there's an article somewhere about an insane phone bill that someone gets because they took their phone out of the country without recognizing the insanity that is international roaming rates. This time, it appears to be Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage, who's been doing a bit of traveling lately. He was recently up in Canada, and used his iPhone to do a little web surfing. And now he got the bill. Apparently AT&T wants somewhere around $11,000 for Adam's surfing and have turned off his phone until he pays. Now there will be some who say that he should have read the fine print, but considering just how often these sorts of stories pop up, at some point it's worth noting that the fine print isn't working. And... even if you grant the "fine print" premise, it's hard for anyone to figure out how these international roaming rates make any sense whatsoever. They're so far off the charts as to be unbelievable.

Anyway... next week on Mythbusters... the insanity of mobile phone bills? Can we see Jamie and Adam try to decipher hidden fees, while Grant, Tory and Kari search for the elusive accurate mobile phone coverage map? Maybe Buster can figure out what the real limits are on unlimited data plans? Hmm... maybe not.

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Court Says Anti-Telemarketing Law Covers Unsolicited Text Messaging

from the this-is-a-good-thing dept

Via Michael Scott we learn that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has found that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) also applies to unsolicited text messages. The TCPA covers certain kinds of commercial marketing over telephones, and has a rule against the use of "automatic telephone dialing systems," but it wasn't clear if text messaging was an automatic telephone dialing system. The court has now said yes.

Separately, the case looked at whether or not agreeing to a basic terms of service also represented "express consent" which is needed under the TCPA. In this case, the woman had purchased a ringtone, but did not believe she had consented to commercial text messages. In buying the ringtone, the woman agreed to an extremely broadly worded terms of service that was probably purposely designed by lawyers to cover a wide swath of potential other things -- such as allowing the company to let others market things to the user. The question was whether or not other companies, who purchased the phone number from the ringtone company, could then market to the woman. The court here finds that dubious as well, noting that "express consent" is "[c]onsent that is clearly and unmistakably stated," which the court feels was not the case here, since the consent was only for the ringtone company to market messages, not anyone else (even though the marketing company -- in this case Simon & Schuster -- noted that the text message was "powered by" the ringtone company): "Thus, Satterfield's consent to receive promotional material by Nextones and its affilliates and brands cannot be read as consenting to the receipt of Simon & Schuster's promotional material."

This ruling isn't the final say on the matter -- as the appeals court was just reversing a lower court's summary judgment, and telling the lower court that it needs to actually go further in paying attention to the case. However, the points raised above are certainly important ones that I imagine will start showing up in other cases as well. Finally, it's also worth pointing out that the defendant in this case is Simon & Schuster, rather than Nextones. This does raise some interesting questions. Simon & Schuster believed that it was purchasing the right to contact these phone numbers legitimately via a marketing company partnered with Nextones. It had no idea that the "agreement" may be faulty, but it may now be liable for breaking the law. If that moves forward, you would have to think that Simon & Schuster has an argument to sue either Nextones or the marketing company it worked with for misrepresenting the "explicit consent" on those numbers.

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AT&T Text Spams Customers Promoting American Idol; Insists It's Not Spam

from the redefining-spam dept

For the most part, mobile operators have been good about trying to prevent SMS text spam, but it appears that AT&T has gone in the other direction. It's actually spamming people. Apparently it sent a text message promoting the TV show American Idol to anyone who had voted in past American Idol contests or anyone that AT&T considered to be a "heavy texter." I can almost (but not quite) understand contacting former voters. But randomly targeting other "heavy texters" is simply pure spam.

But that's not the way AT&T sees it. In a statement that entirely redefines spam, a spokesperson said that it wasn't spam because they didn't charge people to receive the message. He also claimed it was no problem because people could opt-out of future messages. This shows an incredible (but all too typical for AT&T) tone deafness to the issue. Email spam is already quite annoying. But text messaging spam takes it to an entirely more ridiculous level by proactively interrupting what a person is doing, no matter where they are. At least email spam can be compartmentalized to when you're actually checking your email (and, these days, can be pretty effectively filtered). Text messaging is a lot more intrusive, and for AT&T to claim that this is somehow "okay" because the TV show is "built on texting," is simply ridiculous.

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More Not-Entirely-Useful Tech Tries To Stop Texting While Driving

from the wut-r-u-tryin-2-do-2-my-fon-dad dept

While legislators try (and fail) to ban the use of mobile phones while driving, the market for technology to kill phone use while driving is heating up. Last month, a company announced a device aimed at stopping teens from talking while driving, though it appears to have plenty of pitfalls. Now comes "Textecution" (a piece of software for Android phones) that kills a device's ability to send or receive texts when it detects the phone is moving at more than 10 miles per hour. The application's developers intend for parents to install it on their kids' phones so they can't text while driving -- assuming, of course, the kids have a G1 handset. That's a significant hurdle in itself, as it's hard to imagine that, as with so many other things, kids won't find it too hard to circumvent. Also, the application can't tell when a kid is actually driving a car, or simply riding in one, or riding on a bus or train, or in another situation where they're moving faster than 10 mph, but not driving a car, and perfectly able to safely text. It really appears that this software isn't much of a solution, but rather window dressing that makes parents think they're doing something to protect their kids. But isn't installing some easily defeated application on your teenager's phone to put your mind at ease simpler than trying to teach them responsibility?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Much Ado About Nothing In Accusations Over Text Message Pricing

from the focus,-people,-focus dept

I'm hardly a mobile operator apologist, but the NY Times' Randall Stross is trying to make a pretty tiny molehill into a mountain by picking up on that old, dead story suggesting that mobile operators are somehow ripping users off with SMS text messaging pricing. As was noted when Senator Herb Kohl first tried to make an issue out of this, per message pricing is fairly meaningless, since most users of text messaging subscribe to bulk plans or even unlimited plans. Besides, if pricing really were a problem, then people wouldn't be text messaging so much. The fact that they're using it so much, suggests there really isn't that much of a problem with the pricing. Stross tries to focus on the actual "cost" to the carriers for sending a text message, which is tiny, but that, again, is rather meaningless. A year ago, Tom Lee pointed out just how silly such an argument is for text messaging. As mobile phones grow more and more sophisticated, if SMS pricing really is a problem, alternatives (such as mobile instant messaging) will grow as well, and SMS providers will need to adjust their pricing. If, however, consumers don't have a problem with the current system (and all indications are that they don't), then why is the NY Times even bothering?

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Verizon Wireless Massively Raises Rates For Text Messaging Services

from the margins?--you-have-no-margins? dept

It's no surprise that some things may be getting more expensive these days, especially as companies start dealing with the fallout from the financial crisis -- but it appears that some are going a bit overboard. There's a bit of an uproar among some, as Verizon Wireless is slapping a surprising 3-cents-per-text-message fee on top of every mobile terminated text message. That basically affects any company that provides some sort of SMS notification system or content service, massively increasing prices. As some have noted, most of those services bought text messages in bulk, where it cost around 1 cent per message. That means the cost of sending text messages just quadrupled. If you're already worried about the economy and working on tight margins, that could certainly put some companies out of business entirely.

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Court Rules That Your Text Messages Are Private

from the good-for-them dept

A few months ago, we noted that New York City was demanding text messages sent by some people as part of an investigation. This was just the latest in a long line of requests for text messages, where questions have been raised about whether or not those messages should be considered private. Now, a court in the 9th circuit has said that there's a reasonable expectation of privacy on text messages, and a company revealing them without consent from either the sender or the recipient represents a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

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New York City Subpoenas TXTmob For All Text Messages Sent At Republican Convention

from the seems-a-bit-extreme dept

Over the last few years, with the growing recognition of the concept of "flash mobs" or "smart mobs" it's no surprise that various tools have been created to help manage large crowds of diverse individuals who converge for a single purpose. One of those was a project called TXTmob, which was widely used in 2004 by people protesting the Republican National Convention in New York City. Lots of folks used the service to send out group messages to others participating, and to quickly organize and disperse as necessary. As you may recall, there were some confrontations between protesters and the police, resulting in a bunch of arrests. Many of those arrested claim that the arrests were unfair, and have sued the city. As part of its defense, lawyers for New York City have now sent a broad subpoena to the guy who created and ran TXTmob demanding, among other things, many of the text messages sent via the service, including the identities of the senders and recipients. Needless to say, this seems like an overly broad request -- and Tad Hirsch, the MIT PhD. student who set up the service, claims that much of that information no longer exists. Even if it did exist, it seems to be overstepping privacy bounds to demand that Hirsch hand over such information, especially without any specifics included. The whole thing smacks of using subpoenas to intimidate people.

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T-Mobile Sued For Forcing People To Accept (And Pay For) Text Messages

from the pls-dnt-mk-me-gt-txt-msgs dept

It's not too hard to remember the day when a lot of people couldn't receive text messages on their mobile phones. I still sometimes ask people to see if they use text messages. Apparently, if they're on T-Mobile, I shouldn't even bother. Even if you don't want to use text messaging, T-Mobile requires users to accept messages... and to pay for them. That's resulted in a class action lawsuit against the company for unfairly forcing people to pay for text messages they don't want. While it may not be a huge issue right now, if SMS spam picks up, it could become a very important issue.

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