By now you’ve been on Facebook and clicked on what looks like a fun online invitation to test your IQ, to see how it compares with that of the likes of President Barack Obama. Big Mistake.
This is what noseweek reader Janice Papadopoulos has to say: “My husband did an online IQ test and then kept getting SMSs. When he told me, alarm bells went off in my head!” Janice checked his cell account from December 2008 and found that, since making that fateful click, his account has been debited with an extra R50 per week.
What she had discovered was the tip of the iceberg. Consumers are being fleeced of billions by one such scam after another. Supposedly tough new sanctions have been announced by the Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association (Waspa), the industry body that “self-regulates” mobile content services providers – but they’re treated with contempt by the big players: the profits are so big that fines in the hundreds of thousands of rands are paid with a smile by the mobile companies.
Mr Papadopoulos, like millions of other young internet and cellphone users, has difficulty restraining his twitchy fingers whenever he’s invited to “click here” or “click to register”. When Janice had a closer look at his cellphone account, she found two more such charges tacked onto his bill: one from Buongiorno.com, for R10 a day, and another from Mira Networks, at R20 a day. She complained to Vodacom but received no response from the mobile service provider, who, experts say, is earning 40/50% of the sums generated by such SMSs passing through its network.
Telecommunications law expert and Waspa adjudicator Dominic Cull says he hears this kind of complaint “all too often”. He advises consumers to take their complaints directly to Waspa at
www.waspa.org.za.
“If you want to play in the mobile content space, the networks will only deal with you if you are a member of Waspa. When members transgress the code of conduct the sanctions that are available to an adjudicator range from a reprimand to a fine, or a suspended fine. Fines can run into hundreds of thousands of rands and repeat offenders can face expulsion,” he says.
He however does concede that the fact that these fines are paid fairly quickly indicates just how much money is being made by the mobile service providers.
Confronted with the volume of complaints at
www.Waspa.org.za, one wonders if the industry isn’t simply factoring the fines in as part of the cost of doing business. Repeat offenders are prolific, with a slew of recent complaints about Buongiorno UK!/Blinck Mobile which drives the IQ SMS scam. What’s the point of having a regulating association when fines are so easily paid, while more consumers are reeled in and then ripped off?
Researcher, author and digital expert Arthur Goldstuck agrees that the problem is very common. “It is a pervasive problem, but the guilty guys are often fly-by-nights. Sometimes you have serious operators who infringe, but they very quickly pull back from that kind of behaviour because it is a violation of the Waspa code of conduct, and all the networks are signed onto Waspa. The networks are obliged to stop their service if the complaint isn’t addressed by the perpetrator. They are then blacklisted by the networks,” says Goldstuck.
But how ready are the networks to blacklist transgressors, given that they take a significant share of all revenues that content operators drive through their networks? Goldstuck says that the actual cost to providers of an SMS could be as low as one cent, but currently the charge per SMS ranges from 14c to 25c – still a mere fraction of what consumers end up paying the “fun” scheme operators, who commonly charge R5 or more per SMS.
Similar things are happening in the online gaming world, where gambling companies are fined by VISA and MasterCard when they get a lot of repudiations. “The VISA or MasterCard fines run into millions, but the amount of money these online gambling sites are making far outweighs the fines that they receive,” says Goldstuck
