Fraudulent Text Messages and Verizon's Response

Question

I received a text message telling me I had won a $1,000 Best Buy gift card, with instructions on how to claim it.  I suspected it was fraud and called Best Buy.  They confirmed it was a fraudulent text and told me they had received thousands of calls about the message.  I called Verizon Customer Service to inform them about the message and they claimed to be unaware that this message was being circulated to customers.  I was told that this sender could not be blocked from sending messages to Verizon customers, despite knowing the phone number it was coming from, and knowing that the messages are fraudulent scams.  On top of it, I'm paying Verizon for the privilege receivng these scam messages, since I don't have a text plan. I'm very disappointed with Verizon's response and the fact that they aren't taking a more proactive approach to protecting their customers.  I think Verizon's Customer Service and Fraud Departments should want to know about these scams and should at least act like they care about preventing their customers from getting these bogus messages.  They should have an easy way to forward messages like these to their Fraud Department. I also hate the fact that I have to pay Verizon $.20 for each fraudulent text I receive.  Never was offered a credit.  It's a good way to "encourage" customers to pay for a text plan, even if they don't text much.  I'm a long-time customer who has spent a lot of my hard-earned money with Verizon over the years.  I feel like I'm getting nickel-and-dimed to death on top of the overly-complicated plans and inconsistent information I receive from customer service.  Do they really care about the customer, or just about the revenue?   

Answer 1

More and more of these type of messages have become a regular because of all the electronic footprints users are leaving all over the web like Facebook, Twitter, file sharing and not to forget the free applications that are usually infested with advertisements..
Security should start at home first because no level of security will stop personal information from being available when users simply give it out to oters on a regular.
I have had a number of clients that would go to a infected site that requested for the user to disable their system Virus Scan or Firewall to access data from the site and the customer would do it and then their system gets infected, is this some how my job to resolve this issue for free?
I really do not see how this is Verizon’s problem to resolve.