Twitter Gets Hit With Class-Action Law Suit Over Unwanted Text Messages

Lawyers seem very trigger happy lately with class-action cases—well, when are they not?—with lawsuits recently filed against Apple and Google for location tracking, to Sony for the PlayStation Network breach, and to now a bizarre case against Twitter. Two Californian residents, Drew Moss and Sahar Maleksaeedi are suing Twitter for sending unwanted text messages.

Moss and Maleksaeedi claim that Twitter sent them confirmation text messages after they sent text messages with the command 'STOP' to turn off all phone notifications. They claim that Twitter is engaging in unlawful conduct by contacting them via SMS without their consent. They say that this is not only an invasion of their privacy but a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.

The duo further claim that the automated confirmation messages sent back to them after they requested to stop receiving messages resulted in additional charges to their mobile service plans. They are seeking up to $1,500 in damages for each alleged violation. If aggregated as a class-action suit in the tens of thousands, it could exceed $5 million.

Part of the filed document reads:

At some point Plaintiffs decided that they no longer wanted to receive text message notifications on their cellular telephone from Defendant.

Plaintiffs then responded to Defendant's last text message notification by replying "stop," as instructed by Twitter.

At this point, Plaintiffs withdrew any express or implied consent to receive text message notification to their cellular telephone that they may have previous given Twitter.

In response to receiving this revocation of consent, Defendant then immediately sent another, unsolicited, confirmatory text message to Plaintiffs' cellular telephones.

[via TechCrunch]