Watchdog promises to clean up dodgy downloads

Apparently, the UK’s premium downloads market is in need of a clean-up. The regulator formerly known as ICSTIS – PhonepayPlus – is launching a probe of mobile premium services including ringtones and games, saying there’s “evidence of significant consumer harm”.

Such evidence includes 4,500 complaints made in the first three months of this year, up 40 percent on last year), and 33 mobile services with total fines in excess of £360,000 in the first three months of the year.
PhonepayPlus will now be targeting unsolicited promotions, especially text messages; Price transparency and the use of words that indicate content is ‘free’ and subscription services like ringtones and the use of the STOP command. The results are out in July – hopefully the threat of coming under the regulator’s microscope will get all the cowboys to smarten up a bit.