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T-Mobile admits to censoring text messages
MOBILE OPERATOR T-Mobile has admitted that it picks and chooses which text messages to deliver on its network.
The admission came in legal case in which the mobile operator is being sued by the short-code text service EZ Text. The text marketing firm, which signed up a California marijuana dispensary found that it fell afoul of T-Mobile's apparently secret guidelines.
T-Mobile said that it reserved the right to pre-approve EZ Text's clients, a list of which it says the firm never submitted. In the New York federal court filing, T-Mobile said it requires pre-approval "to protect the carrier and its customers from potentially illegal, fraudulent, or offensive marketing campaigns conducted on its network".
Although one might understand T-Mobile wanting to cover its back with some sort of vetting procedure, the idea that certain text messages can be discarded without any notice is something that will concern its subscribers. That T-Mobile doesn't make the process as transparent as it should be raises the question of possible censorship.
EZ Text is hoping that the federal judge assigned to the case comes up with an answer soon, as it says that T-Mobile's actions are likely to run it out of business.
For T-Mobile, the admission that it can censor text messages is likely to cast a bright light on what other sources, message contents and destinations it deems to fall under its "discretion". µ
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I realize that as consumers you probably don't realize that this case isn't about spamming of unwanted messages (which is illegal btw and you should report them to carriers and the fcc)
This EZ Text was completely inline with the Mobile Markets Associations code of conduct and cross carrier guidelines. No spam was ever sent. The consumers asked to receive these texts.
This case is about Tmobile exercising some rules it has above and beyond these global regulations. They did not agree with the text campaign by Weedmaps, a medical marijuana location service. They are saying they have approval on all content of text messages via their carrier.
Professional Mobile Marketers are working hard to do text msg marketing properly.
We understand that being able send you a message on your phone is a very personal. We have phones and we don't want Spam either. There is a zero tolerance spam policy in the MMA code and guidelines.
We have to do this right to protect you the consumer and to protect our industry from going down the road email marketing went. Thats why specific global guidelines have been developed and are in place. There are FCC regulations as well.
There was a sms that tricked some into giving up bank info a while back. I hate getting spam and I'm actually happy to hear my provider is doing something about it.
There's a difference between censoring messages and censoring companies or groups from using your network.
One would require you to read the messages, the other is merely rejecting some customers.
Mind you in holland a number of large phone companies like t-mobile were asked to give access to certain text messages by suspect criminals/terrorists and instead of bothering to only give the messages of the defined subscribers they decided to just give the government a dump of everything sent in the areas, that is messages of everybody.
Those companies don't give a damn about your privacy or rights, 95% of them will gladly cooperate, and well beyond the call.
So yeah, phones are as private as, erm, facebook?
This is one time i agree with "Filtering" I freaking hate spam and if you think about it, gmail siffs the spam out of my account and i like it. If not you phone would prolly vibrate you to orgasm in your pocket from spam :P
One place to look is premium rate services that you are supposed to terminate by sending "stop". If they say that they didn't get the "stop" message then they can carry right on. Uh-oh, I hope I haven't just invented the idea.
Yay! Share through facebook? Nope, facebook no like!
Recently i went on some comparison website to buy insurance. Having submitted my mobile number, I started getting dubious marketing text messages asking me to call certain numbers where they were offering great deals. I felt sick on getting these 'spam', unwanted texts. There is no 'do not text', registry for text messages so carriers should have power to protect customers from text from marketers abusing text message services which are very cheap these days.
Is T-Mobile a Chinese company trying to comply with their strict censoring laws ?
At a minimum, they need to be open about this and send back a txt msg when a text is rejected.
Bad policy. Time to change providers.