AT&T flooding customers with SMS

Forbes reports about AT&T sending unsolicited SMS with product advertising. Apparently if a third party sends you unsolicited ads it's spam, if the operator sends, it's ok.

Some AT&T wireless customers recently got this text message on their mobile: "Need help using your phone internationally? If dialed from your mobile, free Intlcare is available at 1-916-843-4685." The message came from AT&T, but you wouldn't have known that until you dialed the number and heard the recorded message promoting its "international suite of products."

According to the article on Forbes "The number AT&T gave out to subscribers in its recent ad is in Sacramento County. It so happens that a state assemblyman there, Tim Leslie, wrote the California law passed in September that outlaws spamming state residents' cell phones and pagers. Luckily for AT&T Wireless, the bill exempts ads sent from companies and their affiliates with which a cell user has a business relationship--an exemption the phone companies lobbied hard for."