SMS dating spammers hit by injunctions

Tim Burrowes

August 19, 2009 10:37

Australia’s first federal court case involving SMS spam has resulted in injunctions against a group which was posting fake profiles on dating sites to lure people into joining a non existent mobile dating service.

According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority:

“The ACMA alleged that the respondents were engaged in a complicated scheme to obtain mobile phone numbers from members of dating websites, using fake member profiles, in order to send commercial electronic messages by SMS.

“Unsolicited messages were then sent to the mobile phone numbers offering the opportunity to chat via SMS using services described as the ‘Safe Divert’ or ‘Maybemeet’ services. The chat was not offered by genuine members of dating websites but employees of Mobilegate Ltd and Winning Bid Pty Ltd. Consumers were charged up to five dollars per message.”

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

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1 COMMENTS

Anonymous 22 Aug 09

as a previous insider, i was disgusted at this kind of activity, $5 sms’s each way.. wtf. It was a gold rush a couple of years ago, full of cowboys setting up shop in Australia, then once the regulations tightened, then pack up and move into another emerging market.I saw these business pulling in literally millions each month,it has been going on for years, I’ve seen many lucrative “local” chat services been run entirely out of a UK office.

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