Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

31–40 of 145 posts

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

#31
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 :)

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

#32

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.

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.

In a world where we pay for stamps, why didn't bulk unsolicited mail go away? This won't work.

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

#33
post #22
post #14

Has anyone tried this with real estate solicitors ? I get a message per day about selling my house.

Only 1? I get at least 6 unsolicited texts and 3-4 phone calls every damn day.

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.

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

#34
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a world where we pay for stamps, why didn't bulk unsolicited mail go away? This won't work.

That escalated quickly

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

#35

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…

[deleted]

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

#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").

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

#38

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…

He mentioned the exact jurisdiction where it happened. Can you point at least one thing, that is wrong?

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

#39

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…

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!
Post reply on HN