Bungling Yahoo! sued for sending SMS texts to wrong person
Internet giant Yahoo! is on the receiving end of a federal lawsuit after it allegedly issued ‘thousands’ of SMS text messages to the wrong person.
Bill Dominguez of Philadelphia said he had been on the receiving end of a barrage of ‘thousands’ of unwanted messages after he purchased a used smartphone in December 2011.
Dominguez reckons the previous owner had requested an SMS alert direct from Yahoo whenever they received an email, a facility which continued for the hapless new owner who was subsequently inundated with as many as 60 texts a day.
Repeated attempts to stem the flow were thwarted by Yahoo however, who claimed that only the phones former owner had the facility to switch the function off.
A complaint filed at a federal court in Philadelphia states that Dominguez was in receipt of 4,700 text alerts in just the last five months, a statistic which, it is claimed, puts Yahoo on the wrong side of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act which outlaws automated dialling systems to consumers who haven’t given consent.