ACMA takes action against unsolicited comms

ACMA meted out $336,000 in fines and issued a further three formal warnings as part of its enforcement activities against unsolicited calls, email and SMS during the July to September quarter.

The communications regulator's latest quarterly report on action into unsolicited communications also shows that the regulator finalised five investigations into telemarketing and spam during the quarter and commenced another six.

During the quarter, Lead My Way Ltd paid a $285,600 infringement notice for breaching the Do Not Call Register Act by making calls to registered numbers without their consent.

Meanwhile, Service Seeking Ltd paid $50,4000 for breaching the Spam Act by sending unsolicited SMS messages to numbers obtained from an online directory.

ACMA's investigation found that some of these messages did not include an unsubscribe statement and some did not clearly identify the authoriser of the message — both of which are requirements of the legislation.

ACMA also issued a formal warning to ReachTel for making research calls during prohibited calling times, and to Force Industries and Helen Katherine Woods for sending unsolicited email marketing messages.

The report also shows that there were 11,379 complaints from consumers about telemarketing calls during the quarter, 260 complaints about spam SMS and 391 complaints about spam email.

But around a third of complaints about telemarketing did not contain enough information to identify the caller, and 28.1% related to scams which often use falsified calling information.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Robinpd

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