Are You Tired of Phone Spammers?

Before you read: some questions to help you think about the topic and the words you might need.

Do you get a lot of text messages on your phone that are trying to sell you services?

How do you feel about all these text messages?

Do you think that the government should control the companies that send all these messages? If so, how?

In Korea are you unhappy and angered because you receive too many spam text messages and phone calls? I am and it seems that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is also fed up with these actions in the U.S. The FTC has cracked down on spam message scammers.

The authorities said it was difficult to catch companies that send spam messages because they frequently change the phone numbers used to send the messages from, and this makes them hard to track.

The FTC alleged in eight separate complaints that the scammers tricked consumers into divulging sensitive personal information by promising free gifts or prizes, including $1,000 gift cards at major retailers. Consumers who clicked on the links were taken through a long mixture of Web sites that required victims to sign up for subscription services or credit cards before they could receive the "free" gifts.

Consumers were sometimes required to sign up for as many as 13 offers. The information from those subscriptions was then sold to third parties for marketing purposes without victims' knowing or agreeing to it.

Today's announcement says 'game over' to the bigger scamming groups who are responsible for millions of spam texts. For consumers who find spam texts on their phones, they should delete them, immediately. The offers are basically “garbage."

The FTC said it is seeking to get permission from the courts that will prevent the scammers from continuing their alleged deceptive and unfair actions.

And why has phone scamming become so popular? Well, one of the reasons is that people are more likely to read a text message whereas they will delete and not trust an email from someone they don’t know.

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning.

 The answers are below the table.