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Issue #2, October 2013

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$95,000 fine for Australian spammer

Keyboard and gavel

One Australian businessman learned the hard way that it doesn’t pay to spam.

In August 2013, Wayne Robert Mansfield received a fine of $95,000 plus costs from the New Zealand High Court for sending up to a million spam emails to New Zealanders.

Toni Demetriou, Electronic Messaging Compliance Team Leader, says the Department of Internal Affairs investigated and took action against Mansfield after it received 53 complaints about spam email messages promoting Mansfield’s company, Business Seminars NZ.

“Mansfield held seminars in Auckland on topics such as social media marketing and negotiation power; charging up to $199 a seat”, said Toni. “He had a database of almost 67,000 unsolicited email addresses which he used to promote his campaigns between 5 April and 27 September 2010.”

Some of the spam emails had subject lines such as ‘An Evening With A Marketing and Business Legend’ and ‘Cold Calling For Scaredy Cats - Build your business with NEW clients’.

“Under our anti-spam law, a person must not send, or cause to be sent, an unsolicited commercial electronic message with a New Zealand link. It was clear that Mansfield had breached section 9(1) of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007,” said Toni.

The Department used section 45 of the Act to apply to the High Court for a pecuniary penalty. A Statement of Claim was lodged and the result was a hefty fine.

Justice Edwin Wylie said Mansfield’s conduct was clearly either deliberate or reckless. The number of messages sent were in the hundreds of thousands and could have been close to a million.

Mansfield did not try to defend the court proceedings, file an admission or cooperate with the Department to prepare an agreed statement of facts. Nor did he offer an enforceable undertaking not to breach the Act in the future.

Read the judgment and the Department's press release.

Get me off this list!

It can be really frustrating to get your email address or phone number removed from electronic mailing lists. Sometimes it’s hard to know who to contact or how to find the unsubscribe information in a message. Some lack an unsubscribe facility altogether!

If you’re sending commercial electronic messages, it is important to make it easy for subscribers to leave your mailing list. It’s best practice and helps you comply with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 (the Act).

Keep it simple

Unsubscribe functions should be clear and conspicuous, free, and likely to be functional 30 days after the original message is sent. While many messaging services provide unsubscribe buttons and hyperlinks, it is still ok to include a simple plain-text sentence such as:

  • Please reply by return email with “unsubscribe” in the subject line if you do not wish to be contacted again.
     
  • Click here to unsubscribe.

Providing each unsubscribe request is actioned within five days, these meet the requirements of the Act.

A simple confirmation message saying ‘thank you for unsubscribing’ is okay, provided it is sent within five days.

Keep your list up-to-date

A functional unsubscribe facility means that your distribution list can be kept up-to-date and that only the people who want your messages will receive them.

People who are effectively removed from your list will trust and have confidence in you or your company.

More than one list?

Sometimes people will be signed up to more than one of your distribution lists.

Someone might unsubscribe from one list, believing that they have unsubscribed from all lists, and get annoyed or confused when they continue to receive messages from you.

As part of your unsubscribe process, make it clear exactly which lists people are unsubscribing from.

How often do you check your unsubscribe facility?

Our advice is to try it out for yourself - sign up to your own list and use the unsubscribe facility. See if it works for you, and what the result is. Get a colleague to try out the process too. Remember, it is just as important to remove someone from your list, as it is to put them on.

An unsubscribe facility that demands a lot of process and input will annoy and frustrate recipients, and cause friction between you and them. An angry recipient may spread bad words about you or your company and complain to the Department.

More about unsubscribing.

Be wary of scam messages on your devices

Person using a smart device.

If you have a smartphone or device with a touch screen, you’ll know how easy it is to accidently touch a link in an email or SMS/TXT message or on a web page.

It pays to be wary – especially if you receive a message from an unknown source. Some of the more nefarious messages from scammers contain links that once selected will attempt to install malicious software on your device.

Other scam messages claim that you have won an amount of money, and you’re encouraged to contact the sender. These are ploys to take personal information and money from you.

Take a look at some recent SMS/TXT scams* that were reported to us. There is no reason what-so-ever for anyone to legitimately receive these kind of messages.

  • universalgrant @ yahoo . co . uk CONGRATS Your mobile number has won $2,500,000.00. For claims, Email: kevinsmith @ hotmail . com . br or call (number removed) Reply strictly by email
     
  • Congratulations for winning five hundred thousand pounds in this year mobile draw, send REF No. UK/MG-6491377 to email: magam097 @ yahoo . com for details
     
  • (number removed) @ lightsurf . xtra . co . nz HANDLE THIS PROJECT I am Mrs. Helen Cole in the hospital am very sick, there is a project I need you to handle for me, contact me

SMS/TXT messaging has become a popular channel for scammers because of the high number of smart phone and mobile phone users.

The trouble is that email clients are more readily set up with filter functionality for junk mail than smartphones and mobile phones. There is a higher chance that an SMS/TXT junk or spam message will be read by the recipient.

Since introducing our 7726 (SPAM) short code in June 2012, complaints about unsolicited SMS/TXT messages have been rolling in. You can see a list of reported scams on our website.

Complaints submitted to 7726 also show that a number of New Zealand companies and individuals are disregarding their obligations when sending commercial SMS/TXT messages.

Complaints are largely about unsolicited messages and messages without unsubscribe facilities. Breaches of the Act are being identified by the Department and subsequent enforcement action is being taken.

More about sending commercial text messages.

*Links to scam web pages have been removed and spaces have been added to email addresses to ensure they do not become hyperlinks.

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We are using social media to help inform as many people as possible about spam news and scam alerts that pose a direct threat or risk to New Zealanders.

Our Facebook and Twitter accounts are intended to direct people to our website for more comprehensive information.

People following our account are welcome to retweet and share our information.