Nokia got busted by ACMA today to the tune of $55,000 for sending out spam SMS to customers. Ouch!
The Finnish phone giant sent tips to its customers via SMS, with the occasional promotional text thrown in for good measure. The problem was that there was no unsubscribe feature included in the message, which contravenes the Spam Act.
On top of the fine, Nokia has also accepted an enforceable undertaking to prevent it from happening again.
Let this be a lesson to all businesses out there – if you’re planning on using SMS as a marketing tool, remember to save those last few characters for an unsubscribe link, or you’ll be paying for it…
Image: The AP
Liam Johnson
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 4:12 PM$55,000, really? Nokia might be small compared to the large Android manufacturers and Apple lately, but they’re by no-means a small company, 55k is pocket change.
Kent
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 4:24 PM55K Isn’t pocket change, it’s a developers yearly wage.
Nokia would probably consider it a $200.00 speeding fine.
andrew
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 4:39 PMid be hoping a Dev at Nokia would be getting more than 55k a year…
TSH
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 4:48 PMHaha you pay peanuts you get monkeys – and considering Nokia’s recent record I’d say monkeys is all they have left (software anyway)!
maddogeco
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 5:34 PMi liked getting those. you can turn them off in the prefferences
beredan
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 10:51 PMAwsome. These messages were a pain in the ass for months. I had switched to Android and couldn’t switch the Sim back to deactivate. And even when i finally found how to deactivate by text they texted me again months later