Slashdot Mirror
Telco Spams and Gets Huge Fine
jack_call writes "According to The Register the large German based mobilephone operator 'Debitel' was fined $359000 for (deliberately!) sending a total 48000 spam messages( mail: 36000, sms: 12000) to Danish costumers of rival company 'Telmore'. According to different Danish media outlets, they appealed immediately, mostly because the fine comes out at about a sixth of what 'Debitel' made last fiscal year after taxes."
Why would a telco consider a costumer to be competition?!
$7.47 per spam - faark.
perhaps other buisnesses will think first
Lots of money? Check again, it's in USD. It's not like it's EUR or GBP or something. Oh, and the more they wait to pay that fee, the cheaper it will get. I wouldn't think the interest can make up for the steady fall of the mighty dollar...
And I say put the money towards going after more spammers. Build up the momentum these cases provide.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
I'm sure it was all an accident ;)
Your honor, I accidentally gathered a massive mailing list, sat around many meetings working out what to say, and finally clicked send - all totally accidentally. I thought I was sending my mother some flowers over the internet, honestly I did.
liqbase
Yep, mustn't upset those artistic types.....
If I want to know about some offer, I will ask. Thank you.
Was thinking of writing to a newspaper, but that idea got lost somewhere in a mire of laziness
... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
That they keep sending to their own customers?
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
That'll teach 'em to spam the judge ;)
when you say costumers you mean people wearing a costume ? in this case they should be fined for discrimination as well!! bastards!!
set your threshold at -1 if you want to see me
Now if the concept could be extended to telesales, my sanity levels would definately be returned to normal.
Not a single day goes by when I'm not phoned up by some mechanical phonedialer/call centre and asked if I'd like to buy double glazing/dial a premium line/order jam. Arrrgh!!
And don't tell me to go ex-directory. I want my friends to find me in the phonebook if they need to thanks.
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
It's worth noting that previous spam fines in Denmark have been much higher. Around 15USD per e-mail/SMS/whatever.
But still, it's a good part of Debitel's yearly income.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I for one is more happy now that i know it cost them that much to spam my mobile phone like that. I was pissed off when i get the spam and for once somebody gets to pay when they misuse my time. Now if only someone had the balls to go for big time spammers
I think they got what they deserve. Although, before this turns into a disscussion about telemarketing, and how everyone hates them, remember: Telemarketers are human too. Yes, mod me down for the horrible, evil statment I just made. But, they are. The person you actually talk to has nothing to do with the product, they're just someone hired to call people on a list given to them. They probably don't even like their job, but need employment and are doing it for the money, so think about that before you verbally attack one. How do I know? Well, my mother was one for a short while, many years ago.
With all that said, there is one way to get rid of telemarketers that is funny and polite.
Telemarketer: Hello, may I speak to whomever is in charge of chosing telephone service?
You: Yes, this is him.
T: Great, would you be interested in lowering your monthly telephone bill? If you switch to A&G telco service, I can offer you a great, low rate.
Y: We don't have telephone service in my house, or telephones.
T: Surely you must, sir. How are we having this converstaion?
Y: That's a good question. But I can assure you we don't have telephone service.
T: Are you sure.
Y: Positively.
T: Alright then... Uh, sorry to bother you.
You could say this for anything they're selling. "Sorry, we don't have ______." They'll almost always be confused and just apologize and hang up.
I live in fear of this happening on a large scale in the United States. In a country where we pay (at this point) for incoming calls, I'm just waiting for the deluge of spam messages and telemarketer phone calls to appear on my cellular phone.
I own a small business, and our fax machine has virtually been made useless by the junk faxes we get every month. I promise you, we spend more on incoming faxes (ink, paper) than we do on outgoing faxes, none of which we ever "intentionally" signed up for. And the junk-fax companies have the balls to say "we're only making a living" ??? Please.
Destroy these people before they destroy another technology.
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
Now that's just plain inane. Do you really think a Danish court fined them in US dollars? The fine is $2M kroner, which is converted to USD for the story so that those of us who are not familiar with Danish currency have some concept of how much the fine really is.
As far as I know, the US is the only place where mobile operators get away with charging you to receive SMS messages. And obviously it doesn't cost anything to receive mail.
Therefore, other than the time wasted in reading the messages, it probably didn't cost the customers anything.
On my way to London the other day, I was sitting in the 'Quiet Zone' car of the train. There are notices on every window asking people not to use Mobile Phones.
This moron gets on at a station, and quite obviously reads, and decides to ignore the notices, and makes about a dozen calls to people which I didn't want to listen to. However, it became quite obvious that this person was engaged in a mobile/SMS/MMS marketing campaign, and various other things he said suggested 'spammer'.
Of course, rule #3 states that spammers are stupid, and this one was no exception. He rattled off at great length a list of sites, usernames, and passwords for various SMS distribution services.
I pulled out my newspaper and pretended to do the crossword, writing down every group of site, username, and passwords. I have not done anything with them yet, but I'm sorely tempted. However, as my handsets are all registered with the TPS (the UK equivalent of the FTC do-not-call lists), I'll wait for a marketing SMS to be crapped into my phone before being tempted further.
If you are 'evileye' (what a stupid username), you might be more careful about where you use your mobile next time..
Moron. People don't pay for receiving SMS in the civilized world.
No I have not RTFA
What makes me wonder is the use of the words "large" German Telco and $359k a 1/6th of the yearly income?
Surely for truly "large" telco this would be equivalent of pocket money?
The fines for SMS spam should be higher than the fines for email spam.
Why? SMS spam causes more hassle. Think about it. Many people will want to see the message immediately, drag the phone out, poke at those tiny little buttons, squint at the menus etc. At least email spam can be seen and deleted almost immediately (if it even gets thru the spam filters)
In this case, AFAIK, the same charge was levied regardless.
Post them here! What better place is there than Slashdot? The vast pool of creative nerds here will know what best to do with it!
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
Spammers spam and get money for it.
- "They misunderestimated me."
Damn courts with their jury summons.
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
Telesales people are annoying dozens of people for every one that is pleased with the call. They know it. They are accepting money for pissing people off. I don't care if the person on the other end needs the money. A hitman would give exactly the same reason!
Fuck 'em. I don't care if they need the money, they are being paid to waste my time, and I will abuse them, waste their time, annoy them, in whatever way I can. And that includes your mother.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
As the article says, the emails and SMS messages were sent as the competitor TelMore was take over by TDC (the evil former state monopoly in Denmark). In court the Debitel people tried to explain to the judges that it was all "a joke".
Apparently the judge had no sense of humor...
That's not quite true. In the UK, you are not charged for receiving 'normal' texts, but you can be charged simply by receiving certain marketing ones (which you sometimes inadvertantly sign up for).
Well, i guess that is great news, but only for Denmark. I would really like someone to sue this sms.ac site.
I unfortunatley bit in the site and signed... and yet more unfortunatley was that I gave permission to send request to all my contacts (yes... I am guilty, I use MSN messenger service).
Now, that site has what I call SPAM, gosh! tons and tons of messages in my phone! and later it was by email...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
now if we could only get them indian call centers fined for calling peoples phone numbers and trying to trick them into moving to another company
i got called by one yesterday and i demanded to know were they got my infomation from (i have never given my phone number or address to them) you know what the fuckers said? that companys infomation is confidential wtf? what about my infomation i said. god damn people make me sick.
$2M kroner
What does that mean??? I'd suggest 2 Mkr.
'Debitel' was fined $359000 for (deliberately!) sending a total 48000 spam messages( mail: 36000, sms: 12000) to Danish costumers of rival company 'Telmore'.
So what you're saying is... they wanted to debut thier new spring line of uniforms before the other company?
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
to Danish costumers of rival company 'Telmore'. Spamming the people who ake their competitor's clothes? This seems like a pretty round-about way of competing.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
I sold my soul awhile back and worked as a "Marketing Rep" selling to businesses (I NEEED THE MONEY...and I only lasted two and a half weeks anyway); if we didn't get a "No" answer from a qualified contact, we had to put the number on the callback list. Hangups, secretaries, anything that wasn't a person qualified to take the offer explicitly saying "No" would get a CB...so make sure you say "Whatever it is, I'm not interested, do not call back." before you hangup, or else it won't ever stop.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Five minutes later the phone rang. It was the DG salesman calling back to tell me "You are a bastard." This is the first and only time I have managed to get under the skin of one of them, and it was a deeply satisfying experience.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
That's not quite true. In the UK, you are not charged for receiving 'normal' texts, but you can be charged simply by receiving certain marketing ones (which you sometimes inadvertantly sign up for).
More precisely, some companies advertise "text 'TONE BLAH' to ##### to receive a ringtone", but if you look at the small print, by doing so you subscribe to receive 1 ringtone a week (say) at £1.00 or something, charged to your mobile bill. That's done by reverse SMS (as it's called), as is payment for many normal (one-off) ringtone services.
Every message to me should come with $1 attached. I'll match their address to my contact list, and send the $1 back. Real people will break even, frauds will pay the people whose identities they're stealing $1 per message. "Friends I hadn't yet met" will be reimbursed as soon as I enter them in my contact list as "friendlies". Watch spam disappear.
--
make install -not war
Yes, the UK is rather uncivilised. Fancy a nice cup of tea?
don't do the crime. It's hard to feel sorry for them; they knew what they were doing. Cry me a fucking river.
I am often getting SMS spam from AT&T.
They ask me to go to their internet site on my phone to review the details of some new special. The kicker is that they get something like $.10US each minute I am connected to this service.
Double whammy.
What I want to know is what is the difference between spam and advertising? If we can now say, "You can't send me spam", can we not also say "you can't send me advertising"? If spam is an invasion of privacy, then isn't a billboard on the side of the street also an invasion? What about the flyers that appear in your mailbox and on your doorstop? Isn't that spam too? Why do we have radios in all our cars? So we can pipe advertising into a captive audience. Why do we have televisions in all our homes? So we can pipe advertising into a captive audience. Why do we have our computers plugged into the internet? Do we really need advertising?
And as a previous reply mentioned, you can always vote with your feet and stop being their customer if it's too much to bear. If more people did that, maybe companies would get the idea that it's stupid to spa^H^H^H annoy one's customers.
IANAL, of course, nor should you construe any positive moderation of this comment as legal advice from the moderator ;^)
6. Audible Alarm (not shown)
-from a Cuisinart product owner's manual.
It costs you to recieve SMS messages... which puts it along the same lines as faxes in that advertisers cannot do so at your expense (on a per-item basis anyhow, even email costs overall).
I was actually wondering what the Danish costumers did for DebiTel. How many costumers do you really need anyways? Even most movie companies only employ a few...
Keen idea man lynches
Maybe corporations wouldn't do so many illegal things if they were actually punished. Punishment should scale to the even the largest corporations. They shouldn't get away with things just because they can afford it.
Despite the company taking a one-sixth hit to their net, I wonder if the new business obtained made it cost-effective in the end.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
For a week at the end of January/beginning of February I got an automated phonecall from Vonage nearly once a day. Pissed me off to no end. I pick up the phone, and get an automated voice saying "Press 1 to be connected to an operator to talk about 'Vonage, the broadband phone company'." or something like that... Pissed me off to no end. I finally sent a scathing email to their customer service department, and the calls stopped. (I hate answering the phone enough as it is...but getting SPAMMED with it is too much.)
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I think that started before the court case when they spammed so many people.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Recently the Supreme Court of India asked the Union government, the telcos and the lamers who are responsible for the calls to cut it out or face the music. Some guy had made a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court and has also cited the laws that are prelavent in US, including the concept of DNC Registry. More information can be had from here. As expcted ppl are quite happy. The cellphone operators have also started to do the needful and block such calls, which also includes allowing subscribers to block phone numbers on demand.
7-8-9-10-0
My local trains had one regular cabin, one quiet cabin, and one office cabin.
Well, they "re-districted" that and combined the office cabin and quiet cabin. Quiet office? Heh.
They abandoned the concept.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
48.000 costumers? Wow no wonder the costume bussiness is in crisis!
My gallery: www.estiasis.com/modules.php?name=gallery2&g2_ite