Privacy App Prepares To Name And Shame Mobile Spammers

Phillip Flora liked sending texts. In fact, he liked it so much that Flora sometimes sent more than 200,000 of them in a single day, or 5.5 million in one 40-day period. The reason: each text was digital spam offering mortgage modification, debt relief and other services. When he sought clients, Flora claimed he designed, owned and operated the entire system, and could charge less than a penny per SMS. It appears that Flora was raking it in, until in early 2011 the FTC shut down his operation in Huntington Beach, Calif., and ordered him to pay a $32,000 fine.