Really interesting one for the affiliate world today.

So repeat TCPA litigator ZACHARY FRIDLINE just scored a big victory over Interest Media following text messages allegedly sent to his phone without consent.

As the Court tells it:

“The text messages led to internet properties either owned by Interest Media or an affiliate offer promoted on Interest Media’s platform.” 17 To reach this conclusion, Fridline “track[ed] the tracking links in the text messages” 18 and “capture[d]” a tracking link. 19 This link directed recipients to “imtrk.go2cloud.org,” which is owned by Interest Media. 20

“The Go2Cloud domain is owned by HasOffers, which is an affiliate tracking platform.” 21 “The website imtrk.hasoffers.com is … Interest Media’s account on the HasOffers platform.” 22 These messages “were sent to solicit the purchase of various property, goods, and services offered by advertisers who paid Interest Media to drive traffic to their websites.” 23 “By way of example, some of the advertisers included gift card ‘giveaway’ scams, lead generation websites for sweepstakes, offers for televisions, and offers for iPhones.” 2

The only part of this that doesn’t make sense to me is that I thought HasOffers changes its name to Tune like 10 years ago.

Regardless, in Fridline v. Interest Media, 2025 WL 1162492 (M.D. Pa April 21, 2025) the Court held these allegations were sufficient to state a claim against Interest Media.

Unlike the caselaw Interest Media has relied upon, Plaintiff does not merely “believe[ ] the identified phone number[s]” are “owned by defendant.”29 Instead, Plaintiff described how Defendant’s business model is predicated on solicitation and explained how the tracking links directed recipients to “internet properties either owned by Interest Media or an affiliate offer promoted on Interest Media’s platform.”30 He then identified an example tracking link that he traced to a website owned by Interest Media found on a known affiliate tracking platform domain that Defendant maintains an account with. 31 These allegations provide the requisite factual support “to justify that a call came from” Defendant. 32 Nor can it be said that these allegations are unclear or conclusory. Plaintiff has articulated a detailed narrative based on clear factual allegations.

So there you go.

Probably didn’t help Interest Media’s big law counsel argued the messages were sent without an ATDS but that isn’t even a requirement under the TCPA’ DNC provisions. Indeed the argument was so bad the Court simply said it would “set aside” that argument, which is code for “I am not even going to waste my time with this.”

Yikes.

Crazy that people pay big law lawyers to make arguments that are absolutely meritless. But what are you going to do? (I mean, other than hire better lawyers.)

Regardless another big win for a litigator and bad loss for a lead generator using big law to defend it.