Optus $110,000 fined for mobile spamming
Telco giant Optus has been hit with a $110,000 fine for breaching the Spam Act, the Australian Communications and Media Authority revealed today.
The fine is the second largest since the Spam Act was introduced in 2003. It related to 20,000 SMS messages the communications company sent out in 2007 to promote its Optus Zoo entertainment service. ACMA said that Optus failed to provide infromation on who the text was from because the sender was labelled as “966” – the numerals that coincide with the word Zoo on a telephone keypad.
But ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said: “This was not considered sufficient identification, as “966” could be used to represent any number of permutations on a telephone keypad.”
A spokesman for Optus said: “Optus takes its obligations under the Spam Act seriously. We apologise to anyone who was affected.”
The biggest fine to date, $149,600, was imposed in July 2007 on DC Marketing who made deliberate missed calls to mobiles so that people would call back and be charged for it.
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Oh if regulation here were the same, what WOULD our lovely telco be paying out by now? Billions?
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