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[sevenlayermuddle]

A few days ago, but since nobody else linked to it...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44546626

One part of the rather lame excuse seems to be “only one person complained”.  Spoiler - despite my contempt for all spammers, it wasn’t me.

[Weaver]

The only reason no-one has complained is because people feel a sense of hopeless, that there is nothing that they can do, and the ICO goes out of its way to discourage people from complaining. The ICOs uses tiresome 19C methods for accepting complaints and indeed refuses to investigate unless the victim does all the work because the ICO says it will turn down complaints unless the victim identifies the legal entity that is the spammer. Many time I have wanted to complain to the ICO but have never managed it yet.

The FTC has an email address that accepts all received spam with full original headers. The ICO should have a proper duty to investigate fully. It should be generously funded by the likes of BT whose misbehaviour makes this kind of enforcement necessary.

BT doesn't seem to get it, or thinks it can pretend it doesn't. Once again, its antisocial anything goes, society doesn't count attitude hurts us all, just a little. This is after all, the company who brought you the PHORM scandal just over ten years ago.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I do agree, Weaver.

Also, BT are claiming to be whiter than white, arguing that the spam was for charity, and they supposedly gained no financial benefit for themselves.

Rubbish!   By falsely promoting charity, their image stood to gain a great deal of PR.  The PR benefits could easily have been more than enough, by orders of magnitude, to compensate for the pathetic fine, of £77,000.

And as a business, looking after their shareholders, faced by the toothless tiger that is ICO, who can blame them?   By my maths, the fine works out at just over 1p per offence, pretty good value to a corporate bean counter, certainly no reason to change their ways.   

[Chrysalis]

The one person complained is unlikely to even be accurate, I mean where do you complain to? does the spam tell you where to complain to? if you ring the phone line, do BT's systems have a system in place for logging spam complaints?  If no, then they probably havent even been tallying complaints.