CRTC Issues $1.1 Million Penalty To Compu-Finder For Spamming Canadians

zentigger writes Canadians rejoice! It looks like the new anti-spam regulations might actually have some teeth! Today, the CRTC issued a $1.1 million fine to Compu-Finder for violating Canada's anti-spam legislation by sending commercial emails without consent, as well as messages in which the unsubscribe mechanisms did not function properly. Furthermore, an analysis of the complaints made to the Spam Reporting Centre of this industry sector shows that Compu-Finder accounts for 26% of all complaints submitted.

Now figure out a way to stop the phone calls.

[Anonymous Coward]

The robo-calls make me very, very angry.

Re:

[denis-The-menace]

And the txt msgs, too.

Re:

[CohibaVancouver]

The robo-calls make me very, very angry.

Chill.

Hang up the phone and get on with your life.

Getting "very, very angry" just fills your life with stress for now reason and leads you to an early grave.

Given the depth of surveillance

[msobkow]

Given the depth of surveillance performed by CSEC and the NSA, I think it's been *proven* that telcos could *easily* detect and block the sources of robo-calls, too.

My guess is the robo-call companies pay them big bucks to harass everyone, so the telcos have no motivation to do shit about the problem.

So what happend to the "Do Not Call" list?

[Quasimodem]

I signed up for that when it first came out and have been getting more calls since --- both (semi) human and robo --- than I ever did before?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect as much also. Canadian telcos should be required to refuse calls from international telcos that do not enforce or report accurate call origination. Or they should be required to substitute international telco identification into the caller-id.

I'd be happy to see "Untrusted Origin India" on my caller display for such calls so that I can route them into the garbage before they even ring my phone. But I have that kind of control over my incoming calls. Poor schlebs that get regular domestic telco

Re:

[laurencetux]

you do know that the telcos by definition have ways of sorting the originating number AT THE NETWORK LEVEL.

Even if it was a VOIP call the telco could start blocking the switch (or have the provider disable the account used)

Dot Gov folks need to either start issuing fines equal to 140% of the profits or have the DOD "serve papers" on the folks profiting from this.

Re:

[penguinoid]

They'll know where the call originated from if they'd have to pay a fine for the privilege of "not knowing".

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[tompaulco]

The CRTC need to hold the telcos' feet to the fire and abolish the "we don't know who they are" stonewalling that the telcos do.

SOMEBODY is getting billed for the call. SOMEBODY knows where it originated from. The problem is that the same SOMEBODY who you are asking to block these calls does not get paid when that call does not go through. Therefore, they lose business. The illegal autodialer makes a million calls a day. You make maybe three or four.

Re:

[StrangeBrew]

You aren't kidding. Though I had a 'boy do I feel like an idiot' moment recently. I received a call from woman with a thick Asian accent, very hard to understand, especially given the background noise of a low-rent call center, but I did catch the word 'Windows'. I started to ask her if her parents were embarrassed that she works for criminals. She was obviously confused and clarified that she doesn't work for criminals, she was trying to get me to agree to a 'free' window replacement estimate on our home d

Re:

[jklovanc]

Sure the could block all robo-calls but then the next meme would be "FCC blocks political free speech" or "FCC blocks charity campaigns". Blocking robo-calls is easy but robo-calls in themselves are not illegal. Even in do not call lists there are exemptions such as charity/political calls.

Re:

[tompaulco]

There should not be exceptions for Charity/Political calls. Those are still unsolicited. They are not covered by the first amendment. Free Speech does not mean that you can annoy people to your heart's content, on their dollar. They can make all the charity handout messages or political statements they want and if people are interested in hearing them, then people can call them.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

My guess is the robo-call companies pay them big bucks to harass everyone, so the telcos have no motivation to do shit about the problem.

You can also pay for the privilege of not being harassed. You can block ten numbers, you can block numbers without caller ID, and you can get caller ID. And you can pay for each of these features.

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[msobkow]

The caller-id squirt happens after the first ring, so they can't block it before the second.

Re:

[tompaulco]

Why should a person have to pay to avoid something that somebody is illegally doing to them? The cost of the crime should be on the criminal, not the victim.

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[grimmjeeper]

In all likelihood, yes. Setting up something to scour for email addresses and sending bulk mail costs pennies. If they get even a 0.01% return on their emails (i.e. 1 out of 10,000 people falling for it) they still pull in tons of money.

Re:

[mrbcs]

Didn't Russia do that years ago? Public execution of spammers? Problem solved. Only need to kill a couple of them, the rest will get the message.

Crime is usually the result of lax penalties. Make it so it's not worth the punishment already!

26% seems a bit high

[CastrTroy]

Considering all the different spammers out there, it's hard to imagine any single entity getting 26% of all complaints. Somebody must have been really out to get them, or there must not have been that many complaints submitted. From the quick glance I did, I couldn't determine how many complaints they got, or how many emails this company sent out. They probably would have not gotten such a big fine if their unsubscribe links worked.

I'm from Canada, and as much as I don't like spam, I think that this goes a bit too far. Spam filters are so good now that I rarely see spam in my inbox, and anything that isn't caught can easily be blocked by a filter. This may stop a few companies within the country from sending out emails, but the vast majority of spam comes from outside the country, and this law can't protect against that. It really makes it difficult for small companies to verify that they comply with the regulations. When even companies like Microsoft [google.ca] stop sending out important emails, because there's no way to verity that they have consent for the emails they are sending out, then there's not much the small companies can do to cover themselves if somebody was to complain.

Re:26% seems a bit high

[DamonHD]

Just because *you* don't get SPAM doesn't mean that it isn't a problem in a number of ways.

I get 10,000+ SPAM attempts per day. I;d have to give up well-known and memorable emails addresses to begin to trim it.

Legit inbound and outbound mails get lots in the SPAM wars, eg people miss important mails of mine, and I miss theirs.

SPAM traffic also wastes bandwidth and power in my networking equipment and servers; visible and significant for a partly off-grid system for example.

SPAM filters are a poor fix for a pernicious problem that has destroyed what was a wonderful communications service. I was using email before SPAM existed.

Rgds

Damon

Re:

[w_dragon]

This isn't about the 'enlarge your penis' level of spam, this is about the website you gave your email to 5 years ago that still emails you daily with the broken unsubscribe link. This is about forcing companies to not be annoying and incompetent. After all, if they want to operate in Canada they should learn how to be polite.

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[RandomFactor]

"it's hard to imagine any single entity getting 26% of all complaints."

Likely it means they didn't try to hide their identity and use botnets for distribution like the worst spammers do, so people were able to actually file complaints against them accurately.

Now lets think about the behavior we are actually incenting...

Canadian Dollars

[Greyfox]

Sadly it's in Canadian dollars, so all those extra zeros are basically pointless.

I'm all in favor of rejoicing for no reason

[idontgno]

But frankly, I'd hold the applause until after the penalty is collected and Compu-Finder is actually disbanded. Because frankly, it's a hollow victory if they move, change their corporate name, hire a fictitious body of corporate officers, and resume where they left off.

They're frakking spammers. What makes anyone think this bureaucratic announcement actually will matter?

Meanwhile, the US supports its citizens

[Applehu Akbar]

By fining Google half a billion dollars for allowing discount Canadian pharmacies to advertise on it.
I'm hoping that the Paul administration makes the federosaurus pay Google back every dime they stole on behalf of Big Pharma, with penalty interest.

Combating email spam is easy ...

[CaptainDork]

... if it costs one penny (or some other pricing scheme) to send each email.

The fee would be tacked on the ISP's bill, much like a tax, and would go to the government toward litigation costs for prosecuting spammers.

That simple change would kill spam.

I have to think of everything.

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[tompaulco]

... if it costs one penny (or some other pricing scheme) to send each email.

The fee would be tacked on the ISP's bill, much like a tax, and would go to the government toward litigation costs for prosecuting spammers.

That simple change would kill spam.

I have to think of everything.

And legitimate double opt-in newsletters.

Re:

[CaptainDork]

tl;dr