Hanoi Department of Information and Communications has just issued a VND55 million (USD2,461) fine to Hong Kong-based firm Sam Media Ltd., for their violations that affected some 94,000 mobile service users in Vietnam over three years.
A recent investigation by the department showed that the company's Hanoi representative office earned over VND230 billion (USD10 million) through service message charges from nearly 94,000 mobile service users in Vietnam over three years.According to the department, Sam Media signed contracts with three Vietnamese firms to offer online advertising activities with bonuses to Viettel, MobiFone, VinaPhone and Vietnamobile subscribers through advertising text messages and collected VND230.5 billion of charges from January 2013 to March 2016. 93,735 subscribers had used the service by July 19 this year.
This apparently meant the firm was establishing an e-commerce website for selling goods without being permission, the department said.
The advertising text messages sent to service users had much bigger font sizes compared to the cancel notifications and so users could not read how to stop the services and had to pay service charges automatically.
The department also warned consumers to read advertising text messages very carefully to avoid being cheated.
