Add it to the tab: ICO fines another spammer as unpaid bills mount London-based finance company Nouveau Finance been fined £70,000 (US$85,752, A$112,391) for hiring a spamming marketing company that sent UK residents some 2.2 million illegal SMS messages. 92 battered Britons complained to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) which handed down the fine on Monday. The loan broker, based …
"Directors of churn and burn spamming marketing outfits could be personally fined up to £1 million under Government plans, in what the ICO says will prevent liquidation as a means of escaping paying hefty fines."
Ah, so at least someone at El Reg has noticed that, then! I was starting to wonder.
The largest fine of £350,000 was imposed on Brighton company Prodial Ltd for sending some 46 million automated nuisance phone calls. It opted to liquidate rather than pay the fine.
I bet shortly afterwards they started a new company doing the exact same thing.
It just seems to be so easy to start up companies, liquidate it and start up another.
There seem to be two separate issues here - the companies that do the spamming, and the companies that hire them. Reading the ICO's statements, it appears that the problem with non-payment of fines is mainly confined to the spammers themselves - they have no brand or real business to speak of, so they can just pop up, spam, and shut down before getting caught. Those hiring them, on the other hand, can't do that because the whole point is to bring in customers and you can't do that if you liquidate your company.
So the solution seems fairly obvious - simply fine the people hiring the spammers. Cut off their source of income and the spammers will disappear (or at least have to come up with a new scam). Fortunately, it seems this may be what the ICO is now trying to do - the company in question here wasn't the spammer but rather the hirer, and all the talk of spammers liquidating and not paying fines isn't actually relevant to them. Hopefully this isn't a one-off and they'll carry on fining the people they can actually catch. Fine enough of them and the spammers will die out because it simply won't be profitable for anyone to hire them.
Those hiring them, on the other hand, can't do that because the whole point is to bring in customers victims and you can't do that if you liquidate your company.
FTFY
It would be interesting to know just how many "spam generators" are actually working for legitimate companies, with the rest operating on their own behalf for whatever reason (for which the term scam generators may be more appropriate) or for companies that are as dodgy as they are.
At the risk of stating the obvious be very wary of those claiming to be carrying out "lifestyle surveys" (not covered by the distance selling regulations, and therefore (IIRC) not "banned" under the TPS) because they can all too easily be followed by marketing calls to which you "agreed". One of those coming in to Chez Nous is likely to get an abrupt variant of "I am not interested in this call" which in turn is usually followed by a reprimand from Mrs Commswonk "they're only trying to make a living".
<steam from ears>
One of those coming in to Chez Nous is likely to get an abrupt variant of "I am not interested in this call" which in turn is usually followed by a reprimand from Mrs Commswonk "they're only trying to make a living".
You could be a vegetarian who grows or forages all their own food and knits their own clothing from wool gathered from the surrounding hedgerows. You could even offer to sell the caller some of your surplus lentils.
"There seem to be two separate issues here - the companies that do the spamming, and the companies that hire them."
I think there's an alternative approach: rather than work for direct hire the spammers generate leads which are sold on to companies that actually have some product or service. This would be somewhat more difficult to deal with in this way. The owner of the spammer can shut down and still have the leads to sell on.
"The spammers generate leads which are sold on to companies that actually have some product or service."
This is exactly the model that the insurance scam callers operate on.
The insurance industry has tried to combat it by making commissions on leads illegal but so far that hasn't helped.
"Now what I do is pick up the phone,
say nothing,
they hang up in a couple of seconds."
An alternative. Ask them to hang on a moment and simply put the handset aside. Sometimes they spend several minutes that they could waste annoying other people. Go on, do that, it's a public service.
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