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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."
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.
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In Denmark telesales are illegal except for a few product groups (mainly newspapers). You can opt out of those as well.
Telesales to companies are legal though.
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Theres a great site listing lots of these.
:)
Its here
liqbase
Moron. People don't pay for receiving SMS in the civilized world.
It's not even human interaction these days. Where before I could have fun playing along with the telemarketers (some of whom recognized that I was just stringing them along, and even had a sense of humor about it), now all I get are recorded messages. I'll pick up the phone and say "Hello?", there will be a pause, and then an overly-slimy recorded message (worse than a bad used car salesman) will start: "Hi, this is Jim. Are you tired of your high cable TV bills?" I don't even have cable TV.
Well it's pretty big in Denmark, considering that we're only aprox 4.4mil over the age of 14, and that they have to share the market with atleast 5 other companies...
In Denmark telesales are illegal except for a few product groups (mainly newspapers). You can opt out of those as well.
In Belgium you can not opt out if you have a business relationship with the sender. e.g. my provider could send me a message each day. If there is no business relation, you can opt-out with the Robinson list. This will also work for snailmail and email and sms.
It takes a while (two or three months) to take effect, but after that you have a great silence. If you live in Belgium, it is certainly worth using. The site is strangly enough not well known.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Penalties: Fines or prison up to 1 year. These actually happen too. This week a company sending spam got a deadling of march 26th 12:00 for providing proof that 5 persons (including me) had given prior, informed consent to receiving marketing-email. If they fail to do so they'll receive a fine of around $10.000.
Why not get on the national do no call list? I haven't had a telemarketers call since I signed up.
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Actually they got a volume discount! (no, I'm not joking you).
The standard rate in Denmark is approx. $18 (100 DKK) per message. But the poewrs that be (our government and it's institution) has opened up for discount in cases like this.
Debitel was offered a $180.000 (1.000.000 DKK) settlement over a year ago, but they decided, that they'd rather take it to court. That might have been a poor judgement from their management....
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.
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