RSS
Twitter
Facebook Settles Text Messaging Suit Even If It Probably Didn't Need To
from the less-of-a-hassle dept
Back in October we pointed to a totally pointless lawsuit against Facebook from a woman who blamed the company because her mobile phone was getting text messages from Facebook against her wishes. The problem with the lawsuit, however, was that it wasn't Facebook's fault, as the reason the woman was getting the errant text messages was because she had received a new phone number. The previous owner of the number had signed up to receive the text messages, and they carried over to the new subscriber. There's no doubt that this could be quite annoying and upsetting to the woman, but it's hard to see how Facebook really should have known about it or could be seen as the party liable here -- so it appeared to be yet another lawsuit where someone targets a hot company just because it's a hot company. In this case, though, it appears to have worked. Facebook has agreed to settle the lawsuit and pay the legal fees of the plaintiff, while also agreeing to make it easier to stop such text messages and working with mobile operators to learn about recycled numbers. While Facebook probably had a decent chance of winning the case, from a PR/user relations standpoint it probably made sense to settle and do everything possible to make this less of a problem.
