The ICO has been taking increasing interest in companies that break data protection and anti-spam rules and it’s not holding back in heavily fining organizations that are in breach of the regulations.

Since August 2015, The ICO has issued fines of over £8.7 million. The fines data, compiled by The SMS Works, reveals that in 2017 there was an increase in total fines of 58%, a rise from £2.9 million to £4.9 million.

The ICO can fine companies up to £400,000 for breaking the rules and figures reveal that they are using their powers with increasing frequency.

The Head of Enforcement at the ICO, Steve Eckersley stated,

“Companies who pester the pubic must understand they won’t get away with it. The ICO will take action.”

Improved complaints process

Making a complaint about spam has become quicker and more convenient in recent years. The ICO’s excellent ‘report a concern’ section on its website makes it easy and efficient to report spam.

We’re becoming increasingly intolerant of companies that pester us with spam and are far more likely to report rather than ignore spam.

Nuisance phone calls attract highest fines

46% (£4,017,000) of all penalties issued since August 2015 were for spam phones calls.

Automated calling platforms have been used by unscrupulous companies to target people at home on a massive scale.

In May 2017, Keurboom Communications, a company behind a staggering 99.5 million nuisance calls was fined a record £400,000 by the ICO.

 “These calls have now stopped but our work has not. We’ll continue to track down companies that blight people’s lives with nuisance calls, texts and emails.”
Steve Eckersley – ICO

Data breach fines on the rise

With GDPR arriving in May 2018, companies need to be aware of their responsibilities for handling consumer data and understand the potential consequences of failing to do so.

Since August 2015, 34% (£2,996,501) of all fines issued were for data breaches, with a total of 41 organisations facing a penalty.

One of the highest profile data breaches was by Talk Talk Telecom in October 2016.

They were fined £400,000 for security failings that allowed a cyber attacker to access the personal data of 155959 customers and the bank details of 15656.

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham commented,

“TalkTalk’s failure to implement the most basic cyber security measures allowed hackers to penetrate TalkTalk’s systems with ease.”

Financial services top the fines chart

Financial services was the most fined industry sector. 24 separate penalties have been handed out since August 2015, accounting for 23% of all fines issued.

Surprisingly, the charities sector was the second most fined. 11 monetary penalties were announced, 10.5% of all fines issued.

Charities mainly fell foul of data protection rules. Fines were often for sharing and ‘enriching’ data with other organisations, without the consumer having given permission for this to happen.

SMS spam fines top £100,000

The average fine for SMS spamming was £108,000, while the average for email spam was a more modest £40,000.

SMS spam is far more intrusive than email so is more likely to generate higher numbers of compaints.

SMS spam has almost completely disappeared now, in large part due to the efforts of the ICO. It wasn’t long ago that we were all receiving endless spam from PPI, payday loan and accident claims companies.

Outlook poor for spammers, brighter for consumers

What this fines data makes clear is that there is no place to hide for anyone considering spamming. Ignorance of the rules will be no defence.

With the ICO taking such a tough line on companies that break the rules, we could be entering a new golden, spam free era where our inboxes and mobiles remain free of clutter and our junk folders strangely empty.

All fines data was released by the ICO and compiled by SMS API provider, The SMS Works.

The post Fines For Companies Breaking Anti-Spam Rules Reach New Highs appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

MMW learned Monday that iconectiv is behind a new push to safeguard brand reputations by slashing their association with spam.

As consumers increasingly rely upon text messaging for authentic engagement with organizations to conduct a variety of everyday tasks, the last thing they want or need are irrelevant, misdirected texts they did not ask to receive, or worse, their medical, financial and other personal data sent to someone else’s mobile phone.

iconectiv, a partner of the global communications industry connecting more than two billion people every day, have just announced iconectiv Right Party Verification for Messaging. It’s a new service for mobile marketers, messaging aggregators and contact centers to deliver targeted communications, less unwanted spam and happier customers.

“The service was developed in response to evolving Federal Communication Commission (FCC) rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) that now dictate companies must have permission not just to send marketing messages to a mobile number but also to have explicit consent to contact the owner of that number,” the company explains, noting how failure to comply can lead to large fines for offending companies. With some 45 million U.S mobile numbers typically reassigned every year, just one communication to a number with a new owner could trigger a fine that is currently set at a minimum $500 per unsolicited contact – increasing to $1,500 per contact for offenses deemed to be deliberate.

The numbers can quickly add up. Recent TCPA enforcement has seen many established and well-known brands endure record-setting legal penalties and multi-million dollar class-action lawsuits.

So how can this new service help?

Part of the iconectiv Messaging Solution “builds on the company’s long history in the mobile numbering space, particularly the transfer of numbers from one service provider to another.”

We’re told that with research showing that around 97 percent of messages are opened within three minutes, protecting the integrity of text messaging outreach is vital to today’s mobile marketing efforts.

“Right Party Verification for Messaging means companies can have renewed confidence in one of the most popular forms of customer engagement,” said Scott Puopolo, Executive Vice President of Information Solutions at iconectiv. “When managed correctly, text messaging is a powerful tool that delivers the right message into the hands of the right people. Handled badly, it can alienate customers, damage brand integrity, and lead to costly fines.”

To check out what iconectiv can do for you and for your reputation, check out the company’s official website here.

The post New Messaging Solution Helps Companies Avoid Spamming appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“Spam messages coming from SMS and messaging apps are becoming more widespread,” this week’s report explains.

According to the latest industry data, over half of text message users globally now receive at least one weekly spam message.

Alarmingly, more than a quarter get spammed every day with unsolicited messages.

Most are being spammed frequently. In addition to the 28% of SMS users who are receiving unsolicited messages via SMS every day, 26% of mobile messaging app users are getting spam on their over-the-top (OTT) messaging apps just as frequently.

To learn more about the scourge of SMS spam, check out the full eMarketer report here.

The post SMS Spam Still a Problem appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The case involves Campbell-Ewald, an ad agency which handled the ad campaign on behalf of the U.S. Navy. The firm is now asking the Supreme Court to forestall a potential class-action lawsuit force Gomez to accept a $1,500 settlement offer.

“When a plaintiff has been offered all the relief that he has sought, the requisite case or controversy is lacking, no matter how badly a plaintiff might wish to proceed with the litigation and have the courts expound on the law or any underlying issue,” Campbell-Ewald argues in its written brief.

“Gomez sued Campbell-Ewald in 2010 for allegedly violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act with an allegedly “bungled” texting initiative,” according to MediaPost. “That law prohibits companies from using autodialers to send text ads to consumers without their written consent. The statute provides for damages of $500 per violation.”

Gomez says in court papers that he received a text ad sent by Campbell-Ewald “even though he had never consented to receive it and was nearly 40 years old at the time — far above the Navy-approved age range.”

While the ad agency offered Gomez renumeration to settle the case, Gomez rejected the deal. He is maintaining that he is entitled to pursue a class action on behalf of all message recipients.

“Mr. Gomez had good reason for rejecting Campbell-Ewald’s settlement offer: He sued as the representative of a class, and no suitable class representative would cut a deal that gives himself full recovery at the expense of the class members that he seeks to represent,” his lawyers argue in court papers.

Because the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Gomez last year, the lawsuit is proceeding.

The post Ad Agency Pleas for Supreme Court to Dismiss Class-Action Over Navy Campaign Text Ads appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Help could be on the way. And you don’t even have to text 911.

Truecaller, a mobile call management company, has just released its “Truemessenger,” an app which the company claims will make texing smarter and more social. And it’s currently free to download on Google Play.

“The purpose of Truemessenger is to put a name, and even a face, to every incoming number,” reports ConsumerAffairs.

“It helps you filter and block spam by tapping into vibrant community of more than 150 million members who help protect one another from annoying intrusions,” Truecaller said this week in a release to the press.

How does this work?

“When you receive a text, the app, which is integrated with Truecaller’s network of 1.7 billion numbers worldwide, scans social networks and automatically assigns photos, nicknames, and other contact information to the incoming message,” notes Truecaller.

Best of all, the app also allows you to set up your own spam rules, just like you can with email. SMS spam is either filtered out of your inbox or blocked altogether. You have less clutter in your inbox and aren’t left guessing who might be trying to reach you.

Truecaller contends that spam accounts for 15 percent of all SMS messages sent — about 1.2 trillion spam messages each year. According to the company’s data, in the U.S. market, while there are plenty of other communication options, texting is still the most-used app, making it a prime target for telemarketers and fraudsters.

You know, the guys who SMS you about “free” gift card offers, get rich quick marketing promotions, and outright phishing scams?

“If you happen to be the target of an anonymous cyber-bully who texts hateful messages, the app can gather and present quite a bit of information about your tormentor,” contends the company.

Truecaller says its Truemessenger app gives users the ability to detect, block, and report spam alongside other Truecaller members. Users also have the option to avoid messages from unwanted numbers and contacts.

“We are in the middle of the Wild West in terms of spam messages we receive on our mobile phone, and despite the evolution of services in other areas, little has been done to curb the number of spam messages we receive on a daily basis,” said Alan Mamedi, the CEO and co-founder of Truecaller.

Want to check out a short video all about it? Click here.

The post Spanking the Spammers? Yes, Truecaller Lets You Do That with ‘Truemessenger’ App appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The company recently said that less than 0.1 percent of email in the average Gmail inbox is spam, while wanted mail in spam folders is under 0.05 percent.

“According to Google, it’s the result of using its artificial neural network to sift through billions of incoming emails to weed out unwanted messages and phishing attacks,” according to ZDNet.

Just consider this: Were Google not doing everything it could to weed out spam, Gmail would likely be an unusable mess.

“According to security firm Kaspersky, 59.2 percent of all email it filtered in the first quarter of 2015 was spam, with its senders jumping on newly-released domains, such as .work and .science, to sneak past spam filters and deliver advertisements or malware,” says ZDNet.

Reportedly, Google been using machine learning to improve its spam filter, relying on its 900 million users to flag up unwanted messages through the services “report spam” and “not spam” buttons.

“However, as it noted in a blog post today, users still occasionally have to click the “not spam” button, which essentially meant that they had to wade through their spam folder to find an email that was wanted, but flagged as spam — for example, a monthly statement alert from the bank,” noted ZDNet.

Google is said to be releasing a new system called Gmail Postmaster Tools. This will allow those companies that send email in bulk to analyze data on delivery errors, spam reports, and reputation.

The post Is Google’s Better at Catching (and Ditching) Spam Gmail? Looks Like It appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The announcement comes just as FCC members are considering whether tougher robocall services are a good idea.

YouMail is an app for both Apple and Android-based smartphones. It allows users to better manage incoming phone calls and boasts a host of features that improve privacy and productivity.

“The service includes a proprietary technology called Smart Blocking that detects robocalls — including those generated by spoofing systems, and tricks them into thinking that the user’s number has been disconnected, so calls stop coming in,” explains the company. “Users simply ignore calls, and YouMail does the hard job of deciding whether it’s a robocall or spam call and plays the caller an out of service message so that the robocaller won’t keep calling.”

It’s designed to combat the increasing numbers of robocalls that have made their way to people’s cell phones.

“Roughly one in six phone numbers calling the average consumer is a robocall, and there are more than 80 million scam or fraudulent calls made each month alone,” said Alex Quilici, founder and CEO of YouMail, Inc.

Quilici says the “robocall epidemic” wastes an estimated 20 million hours a year and costs American businesses about a half billion dollars annually.

“YouMail has blocked tens of millions of calls for our users and prevented far more robocalls from ever calling them in the first place,” he concludes. “All our users have to do is ignore phone numbers they don’t recognize and we do the rest.”

The post Fighting Robocalls: New ‘Smart Blocking’ Tracks and Blocks Spam Calls appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The answers to those questions may prove critical when Minnesota jurists consider a lawsuit in Minnesota lobbed at the AMC theater chain.

Andria Addison has alleged in a complaint just filed that AMC violated a federal text spam law. Addison is seeking class action status on the case.

“As part of their effort to promote business, defendants engaged in an especially aggressive and deleterious form of marketing: the transmission of unauthorized advertisements, in the form of ‘text message’ calls to the cellular telephones of consumers throughout the nation,” states the complaint, as reported by MediaPost.

Addison was upset when the chain sent her an unsolicited coupon via text in late April. The phone message may have been sent to all consumers enrolled in AMC’s “stubs” program. Addison admits she enrolled in “stubs” in 2012, but says she allowed her membership to lapse within a year.

“Her lawsuit alleges that transmitting the message violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits companies from using automated dialers to send text ads to consumers without their written permission,” notes MediaPost. “Addison also accuses the Leawood, Kansas-based theater chain of violating the anti-spam law with a mobile marketing campaign that involved offering consumers incentives — like a $1 soda coupon — in exchange for their cell phone numbers.”

SMS efforts have been under fire in recent years. Most firms say they do not rely on automated dialers, but work from generated lists of consumers who have agreed to receive notifications of various sorts.

The post Not All Popcorn and Skittles in Theater Biz: AMC Chain Accused of Text Spam Violations appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The latest research from AdaptiveMobile shows an alarming rate of spam targeting the hugely popular mobile messaging platform, particularly across Europe and India.

In effect, the spam explosion comes as the latest evidence of spammers moving away from SMS to concentrate on OTT (Over-The-Top) messaging platforms.

“The total scale of these individual spam attacks over WhatsApp is hard to tell, but if anything, it does seem clear that WhatsApp is joining the ranks of messaging systems which now have a functioning and active spam ecosystem, and the contributors to this spam are being affected by and coming from other messaging systems,” the report, highlighted by ThreatPost, reads.

Unfortunately, things have gotten so bad in India, for example, that WhatsApp is said to be “overrun” with spam there. And while the problem may get worse (in the short term) before getting better in the long run, WhatsApp is by no means taking this matter lightly.

With its worldwide popularity surging, WhatsApp recently announced end-to-end encryption for its Android app, a reality made possible by the November 2014 coupling of WhatsApp with Whisper Systems, a “secure text and mobile OS vendor.”

Quoted by ThreatPost, Open Whisper Systems says: “WhatsApp runs on an incredible number of mobile platforms, so full deployment will be an incremental process as we add TextSecure protocol support into each WhatsApp client platform. We have a ways to go until all mobile platforms are fully supported, but we are moving quickly towards a world where all WhatsApp users will get end-to-end encryption by default.”

The post What’s Up? Mobile Spam on WhatsApp appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The Illinois 7th Circuit Court of Appeals recently made the ruling against Path, a popular messaging service for Android, which reportedly sent bulk SMS messages to some users’ entire phone books, asking contacts to sign up or relaying “notifications.”

It’s not the first time this issue has reared its ugly head. A simply Google search shows a raft of commentary on the Path methodology. Here’s one, posted at Phandroid more than a year ago: “Word began spreading a few days ago after Path seemingly wigged out on a few users, sending mass SMS messages to everyone in their phone book — ex girlfriends, tire shops, grandmas, etc. — notifying them that the sender had “photos” for them waiting on Path. Not the kind of thing you would want sent to your buddy’s wife on a Friday night.”

Illinois resident Kevin Sterk has complained that he received a text message stating that another person — Path user Elizabeth Howell — wanted to show him photos on the service. The text also contained a link to a site where Sterk could register to join the social network.

“The move lets stand a prior ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan in the Northern District of Illinois, who allowed state resident Kevin Sterk to pursue allegations that Path violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act. That law prohibits companies from using automated dialers to send users text message ads,” noted Media Post in a story on the legal development.

While Path is arguing that the case should be thrown because its system doesn’t use “automated dialers” and its system only sends SMS messages to people whose phone numbers were provided by users, the company is finding few friendly ears.

Path believes the court decision marks a “dramatic expansion” of the federal telemarketing law and opens up new legal risks for any firm that sends text messages.

“Path isn’t the only company that allegedly tried to grow its network by spamming people,” said Media Post. “Lyft also is facing a potential class-action lawsuit for allegedly running an “aggressive marketing campaign” that sends people unwanted SMS messages.”

It’ll be a case to watch as text messaging service companies and consumers wage a battle over what is appropriate and what is considered unwanted and undesirable.

The post Appeals Court Gives Go-Ahead to Text-Spam Case Against Path Messaging Service appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.