I won a suit against a party that sent me an unsolicited text message • Hacker News Board

Re: I won a suit against a party that sent me an unsolicited text message

#141

Post by paulgb » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 10:27 AM UTC

filoeleven wrote: post #87

paulgb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?”

Spitballing here: You can place ACH blocks on accounts, at some banks anyway. I don’t know if the bank will give you the transaction information if a transfer is attempted. If they will, shouldn’t it be possible to set up a honeypot account in order to get the ACH info? Is that info enough to trace back to the spammers? This opens up other legal questions though. It’s entirely possible that you could then be on the h…

Oh yeah, I forgot that some banks allow that. Maybe an even easier thing to try is telling the scammer you need their ACH so you can whitelist it with your bank own bank?

Re: I won a suit against a party that sent me an unsolicited text message

#142

Post by advisedwang » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #139

advisedwang wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1500 is already triple damages. Why would they settle for more than that, when they could just default and $1500 would be the amount they owe with no further legal costs.

$1500 is actually the amount if the person is on the DNC list and has told you to stop. I'll try to find a source

I guess what the cap on damages is not really what I was curious about. I mean if there is a statutory limit of $X, what is the motivation for a company to settle for 2*$X?

Re: I won a suit against a party that sent me an unsolicited text message

#143

Post by exabrial » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

advisedwang wrote: post #142

exabrial wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1500 is actually the amount if the person is on the DNC list and has told you to stop. I'll try to find a source

I guess what the cap on damages is not really what I was curious about. I mean if there is a statutory limit of $X, what is the motivation for a company to settle for 2*$X?

The sued party has legal hours. Settling for more than the damages for the promise of not incurring additional fees from their own lawyers.

Re: I won a suit against a party that sent me an unsolicited text message

#144

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 2:35 AM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #82

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #37

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").

Who is ultimately responsible for providing the prize? Let’s say a German marketing employee is fed up with their job and wants to go out in a blaze of glory à la JetBlue slide guy so they text a bunch of people “YOU WON A BRAND NEW TESLA CYBERTRUCK”. Would the employer or the employee be on the hook to supply the Cybertrucks?

Whoever sends the message. Remember, these cases get decided by human judges, not robots looking at e-mail headers.

I assume in your example a court would consider the employee to be the one sending the message.

Edit: And looking at the wording, this may mean no cybertrucks for anyone because the sender has to be a business (simplified) for the law to apply.

Re: I won a suit against a party that sent me an unsolicited text message

#145

Post by deepsun » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #140

deepsun wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> difficult to implement idea A lot of carriers has been billing by minute since the dawn of mobile telecom. And it's still in place in many (most?) countries. Only US/Canada/Mexico are used to unlimited phone calls.

A note, though: A prepaid phone in the US makes you pay for both incoming and outgoing calls unless things have changed. A prepaid phone in Norway only charges you for outgoing calls.

Yep, same in Eastern Europe.