Verizon Wins Against SMS Spammer

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

February 2, 2006, 11:19 AM

Verizon Wireless, the second largest cell phone carrier in the United States, announced Wednesday that it had won a permanent injunction against a Florida company that had been spamming its users with unsolicited text messages.

According to the suit, Passport Holidays of Ormond Beach, Florida had sent some 98,000 messages. The text messages claimed that the recipient had won a cruise and instructed them to contact the company to claim their prize.

Passport Holidays would be responsible for paying a $10,000 fine, which Verizon said it would donate to charity. The company was also suing Specialized Programming and Marketing LLC, which Passport said sent the messages for them.

Cellular carriers have becoming increasingly aggressive in recent months in protecting user privacy. A bevy of lawsuits have been filed against data mining companies to prevent them from accessing the call records of Verizon's customers.

These actions followed a NBC Nightly News report in January that showed how easy it was to access the call records of politicians and celebrities.

Neither Passport Holidays nor Specialized Programming were immediately available for comment.