Verizon offers refunds for fraudulent SMS messages

10.03.2011

The defendants also instructed employees to lease short codes under their own names and used addresses at UPS stores in multiple states. "By using these multiple addresses, defendants made it more difficult to connect the [single-purpose-vehicle LLCs] and the short code campaigns to each other and to a single enterprise," Verizon claims in the suit.

The defendants then devised campaigns that complied with Verizon's rules and ran those campaigns as well as others that used the same short codes but didn't comply with Verizon's rules.

One example of an unauthorized campaign was an ad that appeared when users searched in Yahoo for "food network recipe." If Web users clicked on that advertisement, they were directed to what appears to be a cooking website. A pop-up ad on the site invites visitors to enter their mobile numbers in order to get the recipes.

However, the terms and conditions of the service are grayed out and users would have to scroll down on the page to see them, violating the operator's instructions for informing customers of costs, Verizon said. If users entered their mobile number, they received a PIN that let them opt into the service. However, the PIN entry page did not disclose subscription information as required by the operator's terms, Verizon said.

The operator also claims that the defendants redirected IP addresses they knew were used by Verizon auditors away from the noncompliant sites. That meant when a Verizon auditor tried to click on an advertisement for one of the noncompliant offers, they were redirected to other pages including Google.com or one of the compliant offers. The auditors began using IP masking software in order to view the sites presented to consumers.