AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have pledged to stop charging for spam or 'premium' texts.
The announcement was made by Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell, who has been working with dozen of other state AGs to stop mobile cramming, or unauthorized third-party charges that pop up on mobile users' bills.
That includes text-based weather alerts, sports score alerts, daily jokes, horoscopes, trivia, and subscriptions that enable monthly downloads, like 10 ringtones or wallpapers per month.
As part of a deal worked out with Sorrell's office, three of nation's biggest carriers will no longer charge for commercial Premium Short Messaging Services (PSMS), which the AG said makes up the majority of third-party charges on cell phones and the 'overwhelming majority' of cramming complaints.
'While PSMS has some benefits, like charitable giving, it is also a major contributor to the current mobile cramming problem,' Sorrell said in a statement. 'We are pleased that AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile have decided to stop the flow of money from the pockets of ordinary people to the bank accounts of scam artists. We're hopeful the other carriers will soon follow their lead.'
In a statement, Verizon Wireless general counsel William B. Peterson said that 'while we don't agree with all of the Attorney General's allegations, we respect his efforts in this area.'
'For years, Verizon has been vigilant in protecting our customers from bad actors. There have been numerous times we have terminated programs and in some cases have taken aggressive legal action in order to ensure our customers were protected,' Peterson continued. 'Since premium messaging was first introduced, technology advances and smartphone adoption have dramatically changed the way customers access information.'
Verizon already decided to stop supporting PSMS due to the 'improper conduct' of third parties, and 'we are in the process of winding down our premium messaging business,' Peterson said. 'Verizon will, however, continue to support text-to-donate for charitable programs and text-to-contribute for political campaigns that use this technology.'
AT&T and T-Mobile will also continue to allow charitable donations to be billed via PSMS. 'Sprint was unable to confirm if they will do so at this time,' Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in his own statement, but a Sprint spokeswoman said later that 'we do expect charitable giving SMS to remain available for our customers.'
'Despite protections and processes put in place by T-Mobile and the industry, not all premium text message (SMS) vendors have acted responsibly,' T-Mobile said in a note on its website. 'After careful evaluation of the program, T-Mobile is now in the process of protecting our customers from being billed for premium SMS services - except for charitable and political giving - as soon as possible, with as little impact as possible to our customers.'
Standard text-messaging programs, like voting for American Idol, will not be impacted by the change, T-Mobile said.
According to AG Sorrell, cell phone cramming on landlines and cell phones costs Americans about $2 billion per year. A May report from his office found that 60 percent of third-party charges on the mobile phone bills of Vermonters were unauthorized.
Back in 2011, the Federal Communications Commission formally unveiled rules to combat phone cramming, and in April, the Federal Trade Commission filed its first case against phone crammers who added bogus charges to users' mobile phone bills.
But it didn't stop there. Just yesterday, the FTC announced a nearly $11 million settlement with an Atlanta-based company that spammed cell phones with unauthorized texts, resulting in more than $10 million in unwanted charges.
For more, check out 6 Tips for Avoiding Mobile Text Scams.
Editor's Note: This story was updated at 12:50 p.m. ET with comment from Sprint.
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