Juicy fine for Bradford firm after it blurts one million spam texts Bradford-based loans company Provident Personal Credit has been fined £80,000 for squeezing out almost a million nuisance texts. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office launched an investigation after a series of complaints were made via the GSMA’s spam reporting service. It found that PPC had contracted third-party …
... works out to 8p per message.
And I wonder what fraction of their quarterly earnings is represented by the amount of the fine?
When Wells Fargo was caught systematically signing customers up for "extra" accounts over a period of many years (with upper management's full knowledge), on which they would then be billed fees, the financial watchdogs fined them an amount which to you or me would appear to be significant (some number of millions), but which represented only a percent or two of Wells Fargo's quarterly profit
Time for a corporate death penalty, and those who were wronged get to sit on the jury.
There are billions of blocked SMS messages and phone calls every year, you just don't hear about it.
However how many people ACTUALLY report them instead of just moaning?
Not hard, on a mobile just forward the text to 7726 (SPAM) except 3 who have to be different 37726.
Also register with TPS and SilentCall Gard (yuk).
Won't fix it, but does make a difference.
"Is there anybody who actually signs up to receive marketing texts, in full knowledge of what they are doing?"
In some circumstance in the past, yes. But these days many of them just take the piss and send out spams way more often than they need to. No, I bloody well don't need more printer ink from InkFactory and spamming me two or three times per week isn't going to change my mind, it's just going to piss me off enough to go somewhere else next time!!!!
They've been breaking the rules and being fined meaningless amounts for at least a decade, and as you can see from this article (and the many similar before it) it's had no meaningful effect on the behaviour of the company's managers.
At what point is the 'justice' er sorry legal (they're unrelated, y'see) system going to realise that the people who pay these fines are the customers, employees, etc, not the scumbags who repeatedly set up and run the schemes.
Once the scumbags behind the schemes start paying the 'corporate fines' personally, or better still start spending some time inside, then maybe company behaviours might change.
Around a minute inside per spam text per user would seem a fair starting point, surely. Maybe a bit less for a first offence.
For a million spam texts sent, that's just under a two year sentence, which typically means a year inside, and a year out on licence.
"Enough is enough", as a certain soon-to-be-ex Prime Minister was heard to say not too long ago.
All those in favour, please signify. Vote now, text LOCKEMUP or LETEMFREE to [expurgated - you can find them on Facebook too if you want].
Yeah, PPc were primarily responsible but what about the firms actually doing the spamming, with expert knowledge that what they were doing, and being paid for was wrong and against the rules.
What penalty, detriment have they suffered?
"Well, Your Honour, i only killed my neighbour's wife Mrs Brown, because Mr Brown asked me to and slipped me a few bob."
Now, if only.
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