at&t sending SPAM texts!

[dannzeman]

AT&T is the first cellphone carrier to begin spamming its customers with text ads. It recently sent texts advertising American Idol to a "significant number" of its customers. Stop right there, AT&T. Obviously, this is a terrible, terrible idea. The company defended itself by saying that the texts were free and that people could easily opt-out by responding with "stop." But they shouldn't even be going there in the first place.
Once they start doing it, the other carriers will, and then third parties. You think companies aren't willing to pay for text ads? I guarantee someone out there is trying to work up a deal where they pay in bulk for 10,000,000 texts so they can advertise their new movie. And yeah, it'll be legal because it won't cost the end-user anything and they'll be able to opt out of ads from that company, but then another company will do it. And another.
Spam is already the scourge of email. Don't ruin texting for us too, AT&T. Your customers won't stand for it.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5131721/att-tes...dol-spam-texts

I really hope this doesn't take hold. We shouldn't have to opt out of this service. They should be asking us if we want to opt in, with incentives if we do choose to accept it. Like for every spam text we get we receive a 10 cent credit on our bills. Now I would probably opt in for that.

[mindfrost82]

I have AT&T and I didn't get any of those texts and as far as I know there's nothing special on my account.

I do occassionally receive promotional texts from AT&T about data plans or their navigation package, but I would get those with Sprint sometimes too.