Supreme Court decision could make it easier for Americans to receive more automatic calls, says the watchdog group

Supreme Court decision could make it easier for Americans to receive more automatic calls, says the watchdog group

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In a unanimous decision that could have a major impact on telemarketing, the Supreme Court decided that Facebook (FB) it cannot be prosecuted for sending text messages repeatedly to customers’ security alerts because their texts did not come from an automatic dialer.

The decision was made six years after a Montana man sued Facebook to stop the company from texting his cell phone saying that an unauthorized person was accessing his Facebook account, court records show. Noah Duguid did not have a Facebook account and had never given the company his mobile number, but somehow it was in the company’s database, according to his complaint.

He continued to receive text messages of the social media company even after following his instructions on how to stop the messages, he claimed. Duguid told CNN Business that the texts only stopped after he filed the lawsuit.

The case depended on the court’s interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a 1991 law that protects US cell phone users from unwanted calls.

His lawyers argued that Facebook’s automated messages violated the rule of law against calls and texts automatically dialed to cell phones. To qualify as an “automatic telephone dialing system”, the law specifies that a device must have the ability to store or produce a phone number using a random or sequential number generator.

But the evidence in Duguid’s case showed that Facebook did not use an automatic dialer in its messages for him – this technology is now somewhat obsolete – and the court’s decision, written by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, concluded that Facebook did not break the law .

“Duguid’s fight is with Congress, which has not defined an automatic dialer with the flexibility he would like,” she wrote in the opinion. “This Court must interpret what Congress wrote, which is that ‘using a random or sequential number generator’ modifies both ‘storing’ and ‘producing’.

In a statement sent via email, a Facebook spokesperson wrote: “As the court recognized, the provisions of the law were never intended to prohibit companies from sending targeted security notifications and the court’s decision will allow companies to keep working to keep your users’ accounts safe. “

Automatic calls are increasing in the United States, with Americans receiving more than 4.6 billion unsolicited calls from companies in February alone, according to YouMail.

The National Consumer Law Center, a low-income consumer advocacy group, says it expects robocall companies to reshape their automated systems to mirror those on Facebook.

“Companies will use automatic dialers that are not covered by the Supreme Court’s narrow definition to flood our cell phones with even more unwanted automatic calls and automated texts,” said Margot Saunders, NCLC senior advisor, in a statement.
Saunders called on Congress to take action against unwanted calls and texts. The NCLC says the call list across the country offers some protection for consumers, but says that call centers typically ignore the law.
Automatic calls were already on the rise before the court’s decision on Thursday, according to recent data from YouMail, an automatic call prevention service that monitors automatic call traffic across the country. In February, Americans received more than 4.6 billion automatic calls, an increase of 15% over January, according to researchers at YouMail.

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