I have a friend who’s being harrassed by an ex, and he seems to be using an app that lets him send text messages from many different phone numbers to get past her blocking.
I am wonderig if this might be illegal?
I don’t know the name of the app.
“Is it illegal” is a useless question unless you say “in <jurisdiction>”. Because law varies from place to place.
No, not useless. People are free to name a jurisdiction and give an answer for example, and that information is perfectly useful.
In the face of my oversight you could have just said “what jurisdiction?” That also shows the question I asked is useful–in that it is part of a perfectly sensible information-gathering event.
But this is occurring in Indianapolis in any case.
From the Indiana Attorney General’s website FAQ:
From the FCC on US federal law:
Assuming there’s not finely worded detail covering SMS Sender ID differently from voice Caller ID it looks like the answer is “it depends on other stuff.” There are legal uses of spoofing and illegal uses.
That’s what protection orders are for. Tell her to get one. Then it is illegal.
Should be easy; she has documentation on the phone of messages sent to her. Even if he didn’t sign them, and uses different phones, the content of the messages is probably clear enough to a judge.
I have only a land line, and I have no LD carrier specified. I make all my long distance toil calls through my google-phone. As far as I know, there is nothing illegal about that.
On my land line, I can also dial *67 to disable caller-id.
I have, as far as I know, no texting capability, and have never sent one, so I have no idea if different rules or laws apply.
How is this relevant in any way to the OP?