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Energy Firm Slapped With $65,000 Fine For Making 1.5 Million Nuisance Calls (theregister.co.uk)
A UK firm offering people energy-saving solutions has been fined after making almost 1.5 million unsolicited calls without checking if the numbers were registered on the UK's opt-out database. From a report: Southampton-based Home Logic used a dialler system to screen the telephone numbers that it planned to call against the Telephone Preference Service register, which allows people to opt out of receiving marketing calls. This system was unavailable for at least 90 days out of the 220 between April 2015 and March 2016 due to technical issues -- but that didn't stop Home Logic from continuing to make phone calls. Some 1,475,969 were made in that time. And, as a result, Blighty's data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office received 133 complaints about the firm from people who had registered with the TPS and did not expect to be picking up the phone to marketeers. It ruled that the biz had breached the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and duly fined it 50,000 pound ($64,500).
We call that, "the cost of doing business"
$65,000! That is like 10 hours of profit. That will show them!
Wouldn't it make more sense to fine £50,000 *plus* 10x the financial gain from those calls? If 1,500,000 calls generate more than £50,000 in profit (over say 2 years), there is no incentive to obey the law. Make it hurt to defraud the public, make it financially debilitating to commit financial crimes, and tadaa, you will see a decline. When companies get slapped on the wrist for lying, destroying the environment, scamming the elderly, or stealing money from the poor, they will continue doing so. This isn't rocket surgery.
Maybe a better punishment would have been to send them to Wipers with the next unit scheduled to go over the top. They'll never do that again.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Opt out list are the grabbing the pig by the wrong leg.
We could have gone with Opt In lists.
But the best way to go about it is to have a way to set your own phone line to not accept telemarketing calls. Then when a telemarketer makes a call to that line, the phone switch simply drops that call. Marketers with an exsisting relation ship could over ride that by sending a counter signal that yes, they have a signed permission slip from the lessor of that number to make a marketing call. If they use the over ride signal, and the lessor doesn't agree, the lessor hangs up, dials a #XX number to say "Oh, no they didn't!" Then the caller has to provide evidence they did have permission. If they don't then it's a $10,000 fine per each call. And after 20 calls in 24 hours of folks say "Oh no they didn't!", the marketer's line gets automatically shut down.
End of unsolicited telemarketing problem.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Putting yourself on the list is the first step. The second steps is to complain when someone calls you. You can use the same DNC website for that.
And then, when someone calls you, try to get some information from them before you tell them you're on the list. Information such as the name and location of the company, a callback number, or other details. Add this information to the complaint report you file on the DNC website.
And when you do tell them you're on the DNC list, don't let them feed you any crap like "oh, sorry, I'll remove you from my list then." Their list doesn't matter. The DNC list does, and they should be checking it before they call you.
Companies can be fined big bucks for each call they make to a DNC number. But you have to complain for that to happen.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Assuming each call only lasted one minute, that's 4 centes per minute. Business telco rates are generally higher than that, so it probably cost them more in telco costs than this pointless fine.
"Slapped"? more like tickled.
... and duly fined it 50,000 pound
... and duly fined it £50,000.
No, don't blame Linux and/or X. It's dead fucking simple to type a £ in X. And has been since 1990 at least. Mac OS is trivial. Windows is too if you can remember the bleeding code for it. There must be a million cheat sheets around on the internet. This is fucking 2017
I agree, it has now basically come down to "you have to collect the information directly from the caller" by accepting the call as most are using fictitious caller id information.
Heck, I have even got my own number as the caller. It does kind of toss in a certain amount of "WTF" in there when you get called by your own number and it is a telemarketer.
I suspect that many of those calls last year were political calls. Political calls have sadly been exempt from the Do Not Call List
I'll bet $65,000 is cheap for all the extra profit they generated
Can't speak for the UK, but here in the US Do Not Call lists allow calls from pollsters, """nonprofits""" and politicians. They're more like 100% free Do Rip Me Off lists. Here's some numbers we guarantee are real and the certainty you aren't competing with people who sell actual products.
I bet if you asked people, they'd say they'd prefer an inverted list that allows telemarketers but forbids all the others. I mean, if a telemarketer tricks me into an extended vehicle warranty, I at least get some kind of extended vehicle warranty. I can't say I felt as good about subsidizing the latest Wounded Warrior rootbeer can pyramid party.
What ever happened to the dignity of large corporations? They're supposed to pretend to act decently.
I remember when 50k GBP was 100k USD. Tell me to whom shall I register my complaint and I shall do so forthwith.
With me, their all showing up with the same area code and prefix as me. Theoretically, I could make a call show up as 000-000-0000 by setting that as the CID in freePBX.
So use it to your advantage:
Learn to frame the matter of individuals' choices of products and vendors as political in nature (instead of relying on a more conventional marketing spiel), establish your own political party (which conveniently assumes positions which are uniquely favorable to whatever organization(s) which you as an individual have as client in a totally unrelated line of business), then start robocalling!
Well, my SIP phone provider won't let me do that. I can only set the CID to a number I actually have. If all of the providers enforced that, this wouldn't be a problem at all.
Take a moment and think about the nature of punishments as they are handed down to first individuals and then to corporations. I think you'll find that across the western world, punishments to private individuals continue to increase [larger fines, longer prison sentences] whilst the punishments for corporations are becoming weaker and even less effective.
It is common practice to hear politicians [particularly around election time] to start spouting phrases such as "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", or other similarly empty sound-bites. It is common to see politicians and prosecutors hand down the most egregious punishments to individuals, such as the charges put before Aaron Swartz, for example. [ When Aaron was accused of downloading publicly available academic journals from JSTOR whilst studying at MIT, he was challenged with a $1 Million fine and 35 years in prison...]... Compare the harm between Aaron's actions and those of Home Logic.
The only way to stop companies from abusing laws prohibiting auto-dial systems and un-solicited spam would be simple legislation. For example, un-solicited telephone calls and emails should be met with a simple 3-strikes policy:-
Strike 1 - first offence - take the total compensation value paid to all directors and senior staff of the company in the previous tax year and fine those individuals exactly 35% of the amount they were paid. To determine which individuals are to be included in the fine, bell-curve the salaries paid to every employee of the company and select the top 20% by income.
Strike 2 - second offence - repeat the compensation calculation, but this time increase the penalty to 50% of total income for the top 30% of earners. Additionally, fine the company an amount equal to 30% of pre-tax profits declared in the previous 3 years.
Strike 3 - third offence - immediate, mandatory jail time for the CEO, COO, CFO and all board level directors, for a minimum term of 3 years. Fine the company 60% of pre-tax profits declared in the previous 5 years. Bar every existing director from every holding a directorship again, in any company, for life. Bar every existing director from ever holding public [elected] office, for life.
I guarantee you that if those were the penalties handed down to the companies that repeatedly and flagrantly abuse the laws, that abuse would stop, overnight. The only way to get the attention of these people is to hit them where it hurts.
And this, my dear Americans, is what all those European privacy laws, that you so often don't understand, are for. I have received fewer illegitimate phone calls in my whole life, and I am not a young guy.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
How does the Receiver has to pay anything to be annoyed ? I just can't understand this. In France only the caller has to pay the bill. And unsollicited calls could lead to a 75000 euros (80000$) fine (and up to 1500000â if the caller tries to trick you to phone back to a billed number)
How does the Receiver has to pay anything to be annoyed ? I just can't understand this. In France only the caller has to pay the bill.
It has come up before here that, incredibly, in the USA the receiver pays part of the call cost. Lunacy. Here in the UK (and anywhere else sane in this respect) it works the same as in France.
They used to call every day.
I just stopped picking up my phone - who needs to talk to me, tries to leave a message and then I pick up if I want to. Lots of nerves saved this way. But I do find the business practice insulting, That, and cold-callers knocking on my door. Wearing a big smile, saying "How are you today?". Mind you, I work from home.
It is just a glorified, most annoying form of begging IMHO.
One-and-a-half million spam calls and only 133 people complained? That's pathetic, like the fine. I am in the TPS register and complain to them about every spam call I get, if I can ascertain who it is from by playing along to get their details (not always easy). I've never heard of the TPS ever doing anything whatever before, so even $65,000 is something.
I hardly get any spam calls now as I live in a rural area. When I was in a city I got far more, which seems to show that most spammers just work through numbers in numerical order after the area code, rather than using a list of actual numbers. That is not worth it in a rural area where the area code is sparsely populated with actual phone numbers.
Putting yourself on the list is the first step. The second steps is to complain when someone calls you. And then, when someone calls you, try to get some information from them before you tell them you're on the list. Information such as the name and location of the company, a callback number, or other details. Add this information to the complaint
Exactly this. You will need to play along like you are interested in order to get their details. Don't just curse and slam the phone down - they are not at all bothered by that.
Fucking 2017 and the Android pound symbol looks like this on Slashdot:
£
Share an MP3? 150,000$ per infringement
Give 1.5 million phone calls to people on do-not-call list? 50K fine.
That sounds balanced.
> Sad that Obama did nothing to help.
Donald, is that you?
It's briefly mentioned in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsxRaFNropw
IIRC in the USA they didn't have (or still don't) have a real way of seeing if a number is a mobile or not by the phone number (other countries use different prefix codes to indicate a mobile phone number).
This would mean that a caller would not know if they're calling a cheap land line or an expensive mobile phone. So they pretty much made it so the caller always pays the same for either land lines or mobile, and the called person coughs up the difference if it's a mobile.
How can something like this have such a long down time and how are firms supposed to cope with this? Just put their businesses on hold?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Should have been 1.5 million £.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
And here in the US, my snooty European friend, it is exactly the same. We have a specific law that states you cannot robocall a cell phone, and we also have the Do Not Call list.
The scammers do not care. They do it anyway.
Just like this guy in the UK...we had a similar outfit get busted in the US. For exactly the same thing.
They and all others should be fined £1 ($1) per phone call made to stop this from happening, and perhaps the law should be tightened to go after Directors personally as well and also confiscate assets that they use but don't own. For example, lots of scumbags here in the UK will register all their assets into their wife's name so when the courts come after them they claim poverty but if changed then they will lose these wife's assets.
We have to stop these scumbags making money and in this case £65,000 fine is just pennies to these scammers as they make way more from the scams.
How does the Receiver has to pay anything to be annoyed ? I just can't understand this. In France only the caller has to pay the bill.
It has come up before here that, incredibly, in the USA the receiver pays part of the call cost. Lunacy. Here in the UK (and anywhere else sane in this respect) it works the same as in France.
Its mostly irrelevant now that almost every plan is unlimited voice.
Obama did nothing to stop that.
The correct phrasing is now Trump is doing nothing to stop that.
Care to explain why, despite scammers not caring, people.in Europe still get way fewer unsolicited calls?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
When mobile phones were first introduced cellular airtime was rather expensive, it's got cheaper over the years but it's still more expensive than delivering a call to a landline.
In the UK at least (I don't know for sure about the rest of Europe but I think it's similar) mobile phones have special phone numbers which usually cost more to call. This pays for the cellular airtime of the person receiving the call so the call is free to the receiver (assuming the reciver is not roaming outside the EU).
In the USA mobile phones have regular phone numbers the same as landline phones. The receiver then pays for their cellular airtime.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Are you running your own PBX? I'm running freePBX 14, with IPComms as the SIP provider. I've never actually set the CID as all zeros, but I did forward my gvoice number to the DID, and set one of the outgoing CIDs to that gvoice number and that is what showed up on the CID on a different cell phone. It's a SIP trunk, not just a SIP phone...I've actually got three phones hooked up at the moment; one Aastra 6755i and two Cisco 7942's that I had to reflash into SIP phones.