Verizon settles lawsuit over telemarketing on cell phones

Computerworld - Verizon Wireless said today it has settled a lawsuit it filed last month against a telemarketing company that was using an autodialing device to call Verizon customers and employees to advertise a children's movie.

In the lawsuit, Verizon claimed the calls were illegal and won a court injunction in U.S. District Court in New Jersey to prevent Feature Films for Families from making any such calls in the future, a spokesman said. The lawsuit claimed the Murray, Utah-based company was using an autodialer to make nearly 500,000 calls to Verizon Wireless customers and employees over 10 days in early February.

All the calls came from a single number, and those receiving the calls got a pre-recorded or live message promoting the film The Velveteen Rabbit, Verizon said in a statement.

The telemarketing company agreed to pay $25,000 in its settlement, which Verizon said it will donate to the National Domestic Violence Hotline in Austin.

Verizon has aggressively pursued companies engaged in illegal telemarketing and text-message spamming, taking several groups to court and using the proceeds to support nonprofit organizations, the spokesman said.

"We've actually been pretty vicious about pursuing these," said Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.

Nelson said that one-on-one cell phone advertising is legal, but using an autodialer is not. At one point, the telemarketer was making 33 calls a second, and the volume of calls impressed the court enough to award an injunction against future calls by Feature Films, he said.

In this case and others, Verizon tries to urge the telemarketing firms, usually small businesses, to stop making the calls. But Features Films for Families refused, and the lawsuit followed, Nelson said.

Feature Films for Families could not be reached for comment.

Telemarketers usually get cell phone numbers for mass callings by buying lists from groups that gather cell phone numbers in a variety of ways, including by finding them on social networking sites, Nelson said.

To protect against cell phone mass marketing, Nelson said customers must take care when giving out their cell phone numbers. "You can look at Facebook and see many people giving out their cell phone numbers on their profiles," which makes it easy for a company compiling the numbers to aggregate them, he said.