For annoying spam calls you will be punished with a million: how to prove that the call was an advertisement

For annoying spam calls you will be punished with a million: how to prove that the call was an advertisement

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The Federation Council approved by law fines for spam calls – intrusive telephone advertising – up to 1 million rubles. But will it help citizens attacked by selling subscribers of all stripes? And how exactly: where and how to report the next telespam?

The persistent calls from both sellers of all kinds of services and from those who pose as them for selfish purposes, stealing our time and nerves, have exhausted everyone – except, perhaps, the callers themselves. And everyone is ready to rejoice at the new law, designed to calm down the telephone impudents, but few people understand how it will work. After all, not everyone has the opportunity to record the contents of the call, and the fact that it was spam will apparently need to be proven.

The State Duma Committee on Small and Medium Enterprises emphasizes that the new law – or rather, new fines – is designed to “protect people’s personal space.” Punishment in rubles for advertising imposed via telephone existed before, but it was much less. And from now on, for advertising spam attacks, an individual faces a fine of 10 to 20 thousand rubles, officials (for example, hired employees of call centers) – from 20 to 100 thousand rubles, and legal entities, that is, those who organized annoying calls , – from 300 thousand to 1 million rubles. There are also nuances for banks that “match” their loans: if the call does not indicate the full cost of the consumer loan – that is, how much the loan will cost the consumer, taking into account interest paid, then the employee making the call is fined in the amount of 40 to 100 thousand rubles, and legal entities advertising their services as lenders – in the amount of 600 thousand to 1.6 million rubles. According to the authors of the law, spammers will be fined even if the call is from a robot; in the case of an inanimate spammer, a legal entity will receive a fine.

When asked how and where to report, so far it is clear only about the websites of the Federal Antimonopoly Service and mobile operators, where a feedback form has already appeared through which you can file a complaint about spam calls and unsolicited SMS.

When asked how to prove that a call was “spam,” lawyers recall the wording: spam is a call or email message intended for an indefinite number of people, delivered to the subscriber without his or her prior consent. True, often subscribers themselves do not notice how they give permission to send advertising to themselves – for example, by automatically checking a box when registering on some site. In this case, will it be possible to fine the annoying advertiser?!

In general, experts in technical execution, namely programmers in the field of telecommunications, as well as lawyers, themselves do not really understand how they will distinguish from a “spam” call who exactly is calling – an employee, his legal entity or a robot, because the neural network now convincingly depicts any voice. And it’s also no secret that they regularly call us from places not so remote in order to deceive us on behalf of all of the above. So far, everyone agrees on only one thing: banks may not give a damn about fines of a million rubles, but all sorts of microcredit organizations and other small fans of imposing their services may themselves be scared.

“Finding lawbreakers in the event of dissemination of annoying advertising is not an easy task, but a winning one,” lawyer Maya Shevtsova is convinced. — The key factor in the distribution of advertising is the consent of the person to whom it is addressed. Without the written consent of the subscriber, an SMS or telephone call is considered illegal – this requirement is enshrined in Part 1 of Article 18 of the Federal Law “On Advertising”.

Moreover, the client himself is not required to prove that he did not give consent to the mailing. Advertising distributors should do this.

Well, if they cannot provide any supporting documents, then they must pay a fine. If there is no formal documented consent, then in 99.9% of cases such advertising is considered illegal. This logic works the same for both the antimonopoly service and the court. The effectiveness of this method has already been demonstrated by prosecution for SMS messaging. Over the past year, the business was fined 133 million rubles. And in addition to fines from the FAS, entrepreneurs receive civil claims for compensation for moral damage.

I think that the new law will be effective at least because some businessmen themselves will refuse such marketing methods, for fear of receiving a fine that is sensitive to them. But overall the problem is much broader. Spam mailings and spam calls are a consequence of the fact that our personal data is easily accessible to everyone. The reason is the lack of proper control over the organizations that collect and store them. My opinion is that punishment should be toughened precisely for these violations. And until the system of uncontrolled access to personal data is changed, we will continue to suffer from annoying spam calls and mailings.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29252 dated April 8, 2024

Newspaper headline:
Futile calls

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