UPDATE: Russian antitrust imposes 300,000 rbl fine on MegaFon for SMS spam

(Adds comments from MegaFon in paragraphs 3, 4)

MOSCOW, Mar 25 (PRIME) -- The Moscow Region branch of the Federal Antimonopoly Service issued on Tuesday three decisions to impose administrative penalties on mobile operator MegaFon worth 300,000 rubles, the authority said Wednesday in a statement.

The watchdog has discovered that the operator had sent out advertising SMS without subscribers’ consent.

“We do a lot of work to prevent similar cases. In 2014, MegaFon blocked more than 1,500,000,000 spam messages,” the operator’s press secretary Aliya Beketova said.

“Starting from May 2014, MegaFon has been offering clients to use an SMS-control service. This free service enables the client to independently and quickly unsubscribe from advertising and service mailout from letter and symbol-containing numbers by blacklisting them.”

The State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, adopted a law in July 2014 banning SMS spam. The subscriber obtained the right to ask for termination of SMS receipt from a particular addresser. Advertising providers must conclude a contract with a mobile operator for SMS mailout and provide all the required information on its volume, time of delivery and message character.

(58.7710 rubles – U.S. $1)

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