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This story was printed from silicon.com, located at http://www.silicon.com/

Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/thespamreport/0,39025001,39118492,00.htm

XXX spammer hit with record fine
Nasty tactics equals deserved outcome...

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Wednesday 18 February 2004

A spammer who bombarded users with pornographic emails that launched a premium rate dialler has been handed a record fine.

BW Telecom, the US company behind the emails, was fined £75,000 after UK watchdog ICSTIS (Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services) received 900 complaints from aggrieved web users who believed they had been duped into launching the dialler.

Emails from BW Telecom arrived containing explicit images, but if users clicked on a link within the email, rather than just hitting delete, the action would automatically connect their phone line at a premium rate of £1.50 per minute.

One victim who complained to ICSTIS had received a phone bill for £200 after falling for the scam. The biggest problem was that even closing the browser or moving on to another site wasn't enough to terminate the phone call.

Users had to disconnect from the internet completely - or just pull plug on their phone line to end the call and stop the charges mounting.

And those users duped weren't just those who were tempted by the chance to look at some smut. The window which the email launched also had a dummy 'X' in the top right.

But rather than closing the window as users may have expected, clicking on the 'X' actually still launched the dialler.

Also causing concern among complainants was the fact that nothing was done to prevent children accessing the explicit material or activating the dialler.

The ICSTIS ruling stated: "The sending of the emails appeared to be entirely inappropriate as they were sent on an unsolicited basis to random email addresses with no apparent attempt made to prevent them from being sent to children."

BW Telecom was also in breach of it obligation to warn unsuspecting users about the cost of the premium rate dialler.