Britain's Independent Committee for Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services (ICSTIS) has socked two New York companies and a Liechtenstein firm for Adult entertainment-related dialer program scams that ran up hundreds of unsuspecting customers' telephone bills.
One of the New York-based firms, B&B Services, said to be an Adult entertainment service, has been hit with a $185,500 fine by a British Internet and telephone watchdog, after hundreds of customers complained the company drove their phone bills up while online in a premium rate dialer and number scam.
"Members of the public complained about charges incurred as a result of connecting to the Internet through premium rate numbers," said ICSTIS in a formal report. "[Customers] stated that they had not agreed to connect to any premium rate service and claimed that the dialer software used must have made repeated calls without their knowledge or consent… As [they] appeared to be connected to the services without their knowledge, they were unable to supply details of where or how the services had been promoted. They did, however, supply copies of their telephone bills, which showed successive calls resulting in high bills."
B&B has denied its dialers connected users to premium rates without their consent, but ICSTIS fined them and also ordered restitution out of pocket and barred British access to their service for two years.
ICSTIS also fined New York-based company, BW Telecom, the same money, this for staying accessible to British Netizens despite incurring a ban last year, after ICSTIS fined it $139,000 in a spam scam in which their porn spam included peak-rate dialer programs disconnecting recipients from their Internet service providers before reconnecting them to higher-rate services.
Liechtenstein-based DDD Com AG incurred a lesser fine, $111,523, for running a dialer scam that reconnected unsuspecting customers for repeated calls at premium rates. They, too, were barred from running their service to British Netizens for two years, ICSTIS said.
These moves are part of a general ICSTIS crackdown on rogue dialers, following bans on eleven other companies four weeks ago from operating in Britain, after they were caught slipping premium dialers onto customers. ICSTIS is also said to be targeting 33 more companies for similar action.
"We have only granted permission to those companies that satisfy our stringent requirements, covering key areas such as clear terms and conditions, user consent, information about how to delete dialers, and responsibility for customer refunds," said ICSTIS director George Kidd, announcing the latest fines and bans. "Any company we find running a dialer without our permission will be cut off immediately."
