Historic fine for spam company
strong>Historic fine for spam company
An Auckland based marketing company has been ordered to pay $120,000 for sending spam via email and text messages – the largest penalty imposed for sending spam in New Zealand.
The
civil case against Image Marketing Group (IMG) was taken by
the Department of Internal Affairs under the Unsolicited
Electronic Messages Act and heard by Justice Mary Peters at
the Auckland High Court.
More than half a million
(519,545) messages were sent to New Zealand email addresses
by IMG in December 2009.
In 2010 IMG targeted New
Zealanders again during 21 email advertising campaigns which
promoted sales of the company’s database products for
between $1000 and $2000 each.
Nearly 45,000 text
messages were sent to Vodafone and Telecom mobile users over
a period of a month in 2009.
The Department of
Internal Affairs took action against the company after
receiving about 500 complaints from the public. IMG admitted
that the messages sent to these people were spam.
Toni Demetriou, Team Leader Electronic Messaging
Compliance says the result is an excellent outcome.
“IMG must now stop sending any further spam to New
Zealand electronic addresses. This is a clear win for
consumers who are sick and tired of receiving unwanted
messages via email or texts.
“I encourage people to
report electronic spam to us so that we can take action to
stop this disruptive and unwanted activity.
“Taking
a little extra time to use our reporting services can help
us root out the companies and individuals who send spam that
ties up your time and can be costly to New Zealand
business.”
The IMG text messages were sent from an
Australian mobile number to New Zealand mobile users. They
contained a hyperlink to a website promoting a mobile phone
antenna booster.
When address holders sought to
unsubscribe by replying to the messages they were charged
the usual fee for sending a text message.
IMG also
sold a database of about 50,000 email addresses to a third
party.
IMG said it believed the recipients of the
email and text messages had consented to receive commercial
electronic messages.
As part of a pre-trial
settlement IMG admitted breaching the Act. The penalties
imposed were recommended to the Court by both the Department
of Internal Affairs and IMG, and included a discount for
IMG's admissions and co-operation.
Notes
The decision of Justice Peters
is available online at DIA’s anti-spam webpagehere.
Spam is the generic term
for the electronic commercial email, fax, and mobile/smart
phone text (TXT) and image-based messages you receive
without having requested them.
Businesses and
individuals can Complain about Spam to the Department of
Internal Affairs' Electronic Messaging Compliance team. The
Department may investigate these complaints and take the
appropriate action.
There is more information about
spam on the Department of Internal Affairsanti-spam webpage
Breaches of
the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007
In
respect of some or all of the spam messages IMG breached the
Act in that:
a) they were unsolicited;
b) they
did not include accurate sender information; and
c)
some or all of the messages did not contain an unsubscribe
facility that could be used by the recipient at no
cost.
The text messages
Between 27
February 2009 and 26 March 2009 the Defendant sent, or
caused to be sent no less than 44,824 electronic messages to
mobile phones operated by Vodafone New Zealand and Telecom
New Zealand.
The emails
Between
14 December 2009 and 15 December 2009 the Defendant sent or
caused to be sent 519,545 emails to email users in New
Zealand.
Between 16 March 2010 and 9 December 2010 the
Defendant ran at least 21 email advertising campaigns.
Previous cases
The previous largest
penalties imposed by the Court were $95,000 in respect of
Wayne Mansfield in August 2013, and $100,000 imposed on
Lance Atkinson in December 2008.
The Department of
Internal Affairs works closely with NetSafe and the Consumer team at the Ministry of
Business, Innovation & Employment on spam and scam
issues.
Ends