Watchdog declares war on mobile spam text messages

TWENTY thousand mobile phone Sim cards used to send spam text messages have been blocked by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) over the past six months in a bid to stamp out the illegal practice.

An estimated eight million spam messages are sent to mobiles in the UK every day, according to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).

The volume of such messages – which range from payday loan and debt management companies to agents claiming to help the consumer claim back money they may have spent on mis-sold personal protection insurance – have increased sharply in recent months.

In almost all cases, these companies will charge large amounts of money to carry out the service they are offering – and sometimes attempt to trick the mobile phone user into handing over money for a service which does not exist.

Sending unsolicited text messages is actually illegal – consumers have to “opt in” to receive any kind of written message from companies under Data Protection legislation.

David Clancy, investigations manager at the ICO, said spammers sell on mobile phone numbers to companies trying to attract people to make claims.

“Once they [spammers] have trapped your number they will then sell it into the [claims] industry,” he said. “First users will pay £1 to £1.50 for that phone number.

“A month later it will be distributed to lots of organisations for 50p, 20p, 10p a time. It makes a lot of money.”

He warned that mobile phone users should not reply to any spam messages.

“I’ve done it myself as part of this investigation,” he said. “I’ve been contacted by numerous organisations offering me payment protection insurance claims, dent management claims and accident claims – don’t respond.”

Under new powers granted last year, the ICO is able to execute search warrants when they believe there may be evidence of spam texts being sent, force mobile phone operators to hand over information and issue fines of up to £500,000.

Some messages try to convince mobile users that they know about their personal circumstances, telling them things such as: “We have been trying to contact you regarding your accident – we now have details of how much you are owed”.

The Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS), which has recently launched a campaign to stop people being scammed by such text messages, welcomed the news.

“This is brilliant and is certainly very welcome,” said CCCS spokeswoman Una Farrell. “It is an important move, but people are still receiving a lot of these text messages – we are being told that every day.

“It is still a major problem, especially as many people remain in debt and are vulnerable to these kinds of messages.”

Although registering for the free Telephone Preference Service (TPS) can stop companies making voice marketing calls to mobile numbers, it is unable to block companies from sending texts, as legislation already bans them from doing so.

Mark Brill, chair of the DMA’s mobile council, added: “We would encourage the ICO to continue their enforcement efforts and would like to see the UK operators to provide better spam filtering software.”