Aussie Regulator Comes Down On SMS Spam

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Communications and Media Authority has commenced legal proceedings in the Federal Court against several local and international companies over allegedly unsolicited SMS spam. It's the first time the regulator has used its powers under the Spam Act to pursue an alleged SMS spammer through the Courts. Other companies have been fined or committed to an 'enforceable undertaking' to avoid this type of action (although these are not without issue). Another firm accused of SMS spam accused the regulator of being overzealous after it received a formal warning. The regulator appears to have instituted a crackdown on the premium mobile content industry in recent months, culminating in this latest action."

Comments

Re:Some basic filtering/blacklisting should be...

[morgan_greywolf]

If I didn't have an unlimited text plan

Unlimited text plans usually aren't. My stepdaughter's boyfriend has 'unlimited text' through Verizon, and he ended up paying per message one month. Unlimited usually means 1,000 text messages or so a month.

pay to receive calls?

[BrokenHalo]

For the information of Merkins out there: here in Australia, we don't pay anything to receive calls or SMSs. This only happens when we're roaming internationally, where the cost of calls can be nearly doubled as the telco slugs both caller and callee. Vodafone is a particular case in point.

Re:pay to receive calls?

[Skippy_kangaroo]

Unless you receive a message from a premium SMS number. Then they charge you $6 a message and send multiple messages within a minute to slam high charges onto your bill.

They supposedly need consent, but many rely on phone numbers entered into websites and general deception as ways to get 'consent'.