Thursday, April 13, 2006

Mobile spam in Singapore: $150,000 fine


Singapore has its way of sending signals to the business community. Fining a small firm S$150,000 is one of them.

It all started on Chinese New Year, when MyGlobalFun, a Chinese client of mobile services provider mTouche sent 300,000 MMS New Year Greetings to mTouche's subscriber database. That's a privacy violation in itself, but things went rapidly downhill two weeks later, when $1 charges started to appear on the recipients' phone bills.


MyGlobalFun's messages were not intended to be free, as it turned out. Protests were rife and after angry letters started to appear in the newspaper, the local telcos (SingTel, M1 and StarHub) quickly reversed the charges. But on February 21st mTouche was slapped with a six-month suspension to conduct business in Singapore, and now there's also the S$150,000 (around US$100k) fine.

Meanwhile, fly-by-night operation MyGlobalFun has disappeared from the radar screen as quickly as it turned up. And the phone number list circulates somewhere in China.

Singaporean subscribers don't need to be too worried, though. The IDA (InfoCommm Development Authority of Singapore) has warned the telcos to prevent illegitime billing via their monthly statements in the future. Trust me, they'll all remember mTouche.
(Source: The Straits Times)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There was a strong suspicion that MyGlobalFun never really existed, and was simply a scapegoat cooked up by mTouche to take the blame.

One of the victims checked the registration date of the MyGlobalFun web site, and found that it was registered a few days after the spam sms was sent out.

Please draw your own conclusions.

Anonymous said...

the company mtouche.com is the one singapore best spammer so as with another one called zingmobile and funmobile. All singapore kiasu companies. many good companies call them cowboy and they call others cowpeh-cowbu.

Anonymous said...

From singapore to Malaysia to other places, mtouche is the one top singapore spammer together with another one called zingmobile and funmobile. All singapore kiasu companies. many good companies call them cowboy and they call others cowpeh-cowbu.

Anonymous said...

Zingmobile went to Indonesia messing with government BRTI and now in Australia scamming investors gang up with Bell Potter Securities Limited for IPO. Heard they want to get $9million and offered 50% discount just to get rid of shares.

Latest news is Zingmobile got entire operation suspended by Indonesia operators for serious scam. Heard they do not spam but obviously cheating users. Indonesia is 99% of their total sales.

If I were the investor, I would cut lost even 50% off. Want to know about who's spamming you? try here

http://www.shares.com.au/forum/showthread.php?p=69262