Beginning in August 2009, Flora’s Huntington Beach, Calif.based operation sent at least 5 million messages; at one point, he was sending 85 texts per minute, the FTC said.

The FTC’s legal complaint alleges that Flora’s texts included links to websites with “.gov” (the official U.S. government domain name); the sites were “not operated by or affiliated with any governmental entity,” the FTC said.

If recipients responded to Flora’s unsolicited messages, he then sold their mobile phone number to third-party marketers. In addition, many consumers had to pay overage fees for the spam texts, the FTC said.

The FTC is asking the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to freeze Flora’s assets and order a permanent injunction against him from sending such messages under the FTC Act and the CAN-SPAM Act, both of which control the unwanted distribution of unsolicited electronic messages and regulate deceptive business practices.

As reported previously, U.S government should take into consideration in adopting the SMS Spam Reporting System.

Encased in a sleek aluminum unibody, the HTC Flyer tablet exudes the iconic style and build quality HTC is known for. It is also ultra-light, weighing as little as a paperback book, and compact enough to fit in a jacket pocket only. With a seven-inch display, lightning fast 1.5Ghz processor and high-speed HSPA+ wireless capabilities, the HTC Flyer tablet is perfect for those who have been waiting for a tablet that is both compact and powerful.

HTC Sense for Tablet
HTC Sense revolutionized smartphones by placing the person at the center of the experience. HTC Flyer’s tablet-focused HTC Sense experience focuses on surprising and delighting people with its gorgeous 3D home screen. A unique carousel of widgets puts a user’s most important content and information at the visual center of the experience. The HTC Flyer tablet also offers uncompromised Web browsing with Flash 10 and HTML 5.

HTC Scribe Technology
Touch interaction lights up the HTC Flyer tablet experience, but it also offers a groundbreaking pen experience. With the new HTC Scribe Technology on the HTC Flyer tablet, people can rediscover the natural act of writing. HTC Scribe Technology introduces a wave of integrated digital ink innovations that make it easy and natural to take notes, sign contracts, draw pictures, or even write on a web page or photo.

HTC Scribe Technology on the HTC Flyer tablet transforms traditional note-taking into smart note-taking by integrating natural onscreen writing with thoughtful and integrated innovations. A feature called Timemark enables you to capture the audio of a meeting in line with your written notes, so tapping on a word in your notes instantly takes you to that exact place in time in the audio recording of the meeting. Notes are also integrated with the calendar so when there is an appointment reminder you are automatically prompted with an opportunity to begin a new note or in the case of recurring meetings, to continue where the last meeting left off.  In an industry first, the HTC Flyer tablet also features built-in synchronization with Evernote, the world-leading notes application and service.

Chinese daily Economic Daily News reported also that HTC expects to sell 1.5 million units of Flyer Tablet PC, which going to contribute US$102 million in revenues. HTC Flyer tablet has recently unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC).

The GSMA along with its partner Cloudmark, which makes messaging security software for operators, concluded a trial in December of an SMS spam reporting system that analyzed SMSes and aggregated reports of abuse. AT&T, Bell Mobility, KT (Korea Telecom), SFR, Sprint, Vodafone and the Korean Internet & Security Agency participated in the pilot.

Users could forward suspect spam using the short code “7726,” which spells spam numerically, said Alan Ranger, vice president for Cloudmark’s mobile marketing.

SMS spammers will often buy lots of prepaid SIM cards and send messages until the balance runs out. The problem got so bad in China that most SIM cards are only allowed to send 1,000 SMSes, Ranger said.

Some of the worst locales for SMS spam are South Korea and China. A Chinese mobile phone user may get upwards of 30 spam SMSes a day, while those in South Korea report thousands of spam SMSes a day.

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