lystn

Nasir and Matt talk about the recent lawsuits filed against companies in Manila about spam texting. They then answer, "We have a PTO system in place that allows employees to take days off, but many of my employees are requesting the same days off because of the World Cup. Can I prevent some from doing this?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: We both remembered our names. Great! This is our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can submit to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: Yeah, if they can get through typing in the name, sometimes, the questions are shorter than the actual email address they type in to. NASIR: That’s true. Well, that’s the biggest obstacle – getting the email right. If you get that right, then you’re more likely to get the question answered. MATT: That’s true. NASIR: More likely. MATT: That’s definitely the case, I would hope. NASIR: So, what have we got today? MATT: We’re going to go international with our story for today. NASIR: Nice. MATT: Based out of Manila here but it’s two companies that are facing a lawsuit for what’s text spam. Obviously, people know what spamming is and what texting is so I think they can piece together that, you know, what happened in this situation that people were just getting text spam messages. I’m sure it’s happened to everyone. I know I get them from time to time. Sometimes, it’s just gibberish. Sometimes, it’s a link. Sometimes, it’s whatever they have planned. Now, at least in Manila in the Philippines, it’s coming back to haunt them. NASIR: Yeah, spam is an interesting thing because, obviously, people do it because it works. I mean, they may have to send to 10,000 or 20,000 or even much more than that to actually get any kind of response. I mean, I assume the response rate is low. But there’s a reason why people still do it – because spam works. Now, I don’t know about text spam though because – you’re right – the stuff that I get on the phone is most of the time gibberish or obviously spam. But, at the end of the day, text spam is very hard to comply with because you have to get consent from them and it can’t be misleading and things like that whereas email spam is a little bit more flexible – at least in most states – in the sense that it can be unsolicited so long as it complies with the can spam act and that requires an unsubscribe list and things like that. Obviously, getting consent of the actual recipient is much better and it’s going to be much more effective. MATT: Right. It looks like this is a situation where basically the company had gathered all these people’s names and phone numbers. I’m guessing they sold them to this third party who then is one of the two involved in the lawsuit for spamming them. They have to think that it’s going to come back to haunt them at some point. I don’t get the thought behind it. NASIR: I think it works to a certain extent. You know, the problem is, if you’re a legitimate company – meaning you’re not selling something silly like these guys probably – and you’re trying to do a service, you know, text spamming is probably not the way to go. I know there’s a lot of text marketing out there that you can go through some opt-in processes, but it’s very difficult to do it legally and effectively at the same time. Email is the same for that matter. Keep in mind, too, it’s state by state. And so, California, for example, is a little bit more restrictive than the federal law. Also, there’s restrictions on how you get the email address. A lot of them get them from scraping these websites and so forth. That’s actually improper as well. Even when you do comply with everything else, how you got those lists is also important. MATT: Yeah, all very true, and that’s why you see people from time to time, when they write their email address out,