I was contacted by GoSMSpro and told that it was illegal to have downloaded in the USA, why?

[AC Question]

GoSMSPro contacted me by phone call and told me that GoSMSPro was illegal to have downloaded onto my phone in the USA because of the ability to customize. They told me if I didn't delete it then my phone would be deactivated. Is this true..?
And why?

 

[lsmachado]

Could be. I just went into the Google Play Store to see if it was listed. See screenshot below:

 

[lsmachado]

But then, who knows? Seems like it is available in the US. Wouldn't the download be unable to be done if it was illegal? It seems like Google would have some sort of "not available" notification. IDK

 

[Rukbat]

1) It's been legal to download GoSMSPro in the US for a long time, and it still is. (I just installed it before posting this response to make sure, and I'm in the US.)

2) It's not illegal in the US to install an app that you can customize. It's actionable to reverse engineer anything, hardware or software, but it's not illegal. (There's a difference between committing a civil tort and breaking a law - you can be sued for the first, you can be fined and/or imprisoned for the second.) But if the app is designed to be customized, you're just using it the way it was designed, and not doing anything wrong. (If we couldn't customize apps, we'd all be using iPhones - and even their apps can be customized, just the ROM itself can't easily be modified.)

3) The Go team wouldn't contact you by phone. It's a free app, so they wouldn't be keeping a list of phone numbers of people who installed it. And why would they care? If I write software in the US which is illegal to use in the UK, and someone in the UK uses it, he broke the law, I didn't, so why would I want to deactivate anything of his?

Either this is one of those ransom schemes or one of your 'friends' is pulling your leg.