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Nuisance Call Firm Keurboom Hit With Record Fine (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A cold-calling firm has been fined a record $515,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for making almost 100 million nuisance calls. Keurboom Communications called people, sometimes at night, to see if they were eligible for road-accident or PPI compensation, the ICO said. It breached privacy laws by calling people without their consent. The company has since gone into liquidation but the ICO said it was committed to recovering the fine. It said it had received more than 1,000 complaints about automated calls from the Bedfordshire-registered company. The ICO said Keurboom Communications called some people repeatedly and during unsocial hours. It also hid its identity so that people would find it harder to complain. "The unprecedented scale of its campaign and Keurboom's failure to co-operate with our investigation has resulted in the largest fine issued by the Information Commissioner for nuisance calls," said Steve Eckersley, head of enforcement at the ICO.
I repeat my call for unforgeable Caller ID. If the Telco can't verify the actual caller phone number and identity, it should present "untrusted" or some words to that effect.
The argument 'this can't be done' doesn't sound credible to me, it implies the Phone Company doesn't know who to bill. Yes, this could be a significant change to Telco switches. But they've been facilitating these kinds of frauds for way too long.
This will not stop nuisance calls, but it will make it MUCH EASIER to block or ignore them.