Nuisance-call blocker fined £190k for being a nuisance caller

The UK’s data protection watchdog has fined a nuisance call blocking biz £190,000 ($258,000) for bombarding elderly people with hundreds of thousands of - you guessed it - nuisance calls. Elderly Aids Ltd made 758,053 unsolicited direct marketing calls between May 27, 2024, and February 10, 2025, according to the Information …

[Winkypop]

Good

But is there even a remote chance of seeing any recourse?

[MOH]

25p per call

That'll really show them

[Jedit]

Re: 25p per call

Cold calling companies rely on volume for their practices because the hit rate is so low - 1 in 1000 isn't unknown. That 25p per call isn't much, but when it amounts to £250 per call that made them money it's a lot more significant.

Still not enough, obviously, but wiping out any proceeds from their activities can still send them under.

[ThatOne]

Re: 25p per call

> 25p per call

They won't pay, they will simply scuttle the company and create a new one (if they haven't already created it). It's the standard procedure, so it doesn't really matter if you fine them 1 penny or a trillion pounds, they won't pay either.

The only way to stop them is to fine the CEO (better, put him in jail and throw away the key).

[UCAP]

Re: 25p per call

They have already tried to shut down the company, but someone complained and Company's House blocked the process. That means the company is still alive, and the directors are on the hook for the fines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 25p per call

Hark at you, reading the article, show off!

[katrinab]

Re: 25p per call

No, the directors aren’t on the hook, just the company

[Roland6]

Re: 25p per call

Depends, however, we can only hope Companies House has govt its act together and will bar these directors from being registered directors of other (UK) companies…

[I could be a dog really]

Re: 25p per call

Actually, if the directors caused or permitted illegal acts to cause a loss, then they can be held personally liable. In this case, it would be "rather hard" to claim that teh directors didn't know what was going on, so the company doesn't have fund to pay the fine - then the directors can be held personally liable. That needs to happen more often to set an example.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I suspect an insolvency practitioner is about to get more work. No doubt there will be a new company set up imminently as well, coincidently hawking the same crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's why making the people running it responsible instead of the company makes more sense. I think an exception should be written into law for illegal activities so they can no longer hide behind a company as is becoming standard practice. Company will now go bust, and a new one doing exactly the same will show up or may already be up and running.

[retiredFool]

I like it. I get the corporate veil thing, I have one, as I don't want to be personally sued into oblivion from a angry powerful customer. BUT if I was willfully violating the law with my biz, I SHOULD go to jail.

[Pete Sdev]

It should be: company becomes insolvent due to fine = directors are automatically disqualified (15 years).

According to this, there's already laws that allow lifting of the corporate veil, including parts of the Insolvency Act, but they're very rarely used as far as I know.

[itzman]

Umm...

Personal immunity lies at the heart of limited company law.

You may not like it, but it does.

You have to pursue criminal charges, not tort, against company directors

[Anonymous Coward]

Telephone Preference Service

Ha ha ha.

Jackie from Dampguard clearly hasn't heard of that.

There won't be any change till Ofcom and the ICO start hitting the pockets of the telecom operators providing the service to these shysters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Telephone Preference Service

Absolutely agree. It's not like the call volume isn't a hint, and the operators can match against the TPS database too, it's not rocket science. Before any operators start bleating about how much resource that would take (which would create a nice cost recovery exercise on offenders anyway), there's no need to do this continuously. Just start sampling above a certain call volume.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Telephone Preference Service

Look at call duration too. The scammers will undoubtedly get hung up on after a few seconds far more frequently that legitimate businesses.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Telephone Preference Service

> Look at call duration too. The scammers will undoubtedly get hung up on after a few seconds far more frequently that legitimate businesses.

I notice here in AU the blighters only let the call go for 4 or 5 rings before the call can go through to messagebank and be charged. I noticed this particularly because I don't many/any legitimate calls thus generally don't bother answering and often check the numbers on one of the spam/scam registries - the telco provides are invariably the usual suspects VoIP/satellite services who are notoriously unresponsive to complaints.

The only call that made it through to messagebank was some scam apparently targeting the Chinese community but was also entirely in Mandarin (or Cantonese I suppose.)

This behaviour would be unusual and might be used along with suspect blocks of calling numbers from suspect providers to block or rate limit.

Our (AU) "do not call" register is pretty useless as there are many exemptions and the majority of callers to who the register would apply are off shore in Krapistan or somesuch.

[JT_3K]

Re: Telephone Preference Service

Maybe we can connect them to the Indeed Human Resources department?

[andy the pessimist]

Re: Telephone Preference Service

I get these calls on my mobile number asking me to add the number to whatsapp. How do you stop them?

[JT_3K]

Re: Telephone Preference Service

You sit, wait for the backbone operators of the UK telephony networks to face financial impact of their idiocy/inaction noting it won't be because their political mates with the financial interests in the businesses hold them to account via Ofcom, so probably around the time pigs fly. At this point, they'll stop allowing people to report their own unauthenticated sending number via SIP trunk from South Africa or similar. Another miracle and they then decide to actively take on nuisance calls which, at this point are probably a major financial contributor to their bottom line.

Until then, enjoy!

[retiredFool]

Had an unusal scam

They sent me an actual USPS letter in the mail. And that cost around 60c these days. And they setup a domain name, more money, although likely spread across multiple marks. But crazy, like I'm going to respond to a dead relative left me 5M.Yeah, right. I'm already too busy with trying to get my lottery winnings from a ticket I must have bought in Nigeria.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: dead relative left me 5M

Bizarrely enough, here in the UK you can actually get legitimate mail like this. There is a little known branch of the Probate administration that is tasked with tracing relatives of people who died intestate (no will and no evident family). A colleague got one of these letters, thought it was a scam, got another and after some investigation and identity checks, it turned out there really was an obscure great-uncle-twice-removed with no closer relative, and he got some money.

Of course, I only get the scams.

[Richard Pennington 1]

Re: dead relative left me 5M

One of my hobbies is Family History. When the Family History Centre in Clerkenwell (London) was open, I used to go there about once a month to look up entries in the birth/marriage/death indexes held there. And I kept running into the same young lady there. OK, she was a spectacular blonde. It turned out that she worked for a firm of lawyers and was tasked with tracing the families of the recently deceased.

My hobby was her job. And because I kept running into her, I guess she was there effectively full-time.

[retiredFool]

Re: dead relative left me 5M

Well to be fair, I did check with my brothers. None got a letter. At least one is probably more publicly known than I, so that added another scam mark. The letter itself had some inconsistencies like it talked about a pay on death bank account but then talked about the insurance required. So was it insurance or bank money? Domain was sketchy as well. Had been created only a month before by a guy in Texas for a legal firm saying it was in Canada. It also had the classic, we take half you take half. Which I'm sure had I responded would have entailed me sending them money to get the process started. It just screamed red flags. But I am aware real inheritance can fall out of the sky. Like winning the lottery. I'm just not that lucky.

[elsergiovolador]

Born

Imagine being born, sort of growing up, taking education, whatever, and then arriving at decision you know what I'll be doing in life? Nuisance calls.

That will be my legacy.

That is mental.

[ThatOne]

Re: Born

It's up there with waiting in front of the bank/post office for little old ladies having just collected their pension. I'm sure they both feel very good about themselves, being smarter than the cattle and all that crap. They're just parasites, oversized, dressed tapeworms.

[Gavsky]

Re: Born

Well, if there's money in it, someone will do it!

[VoiceOfTruth]

Another waste of time from the ICO

Ridiculous. This is nothing but a sop.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, about 25p per call

And that is a punishment and deterrent how?

[gryphon]

Re: So, about 25p per call

Depends what their turnover / profits are.

Not that the fine will ever be paid.

[ThatOne]

Re: So, about 25p per call

> And that is a punishment and deterrent how?

It isn't a punishment or deterrent of course, it's just signalling that "we're doing something about it". It makes a nice headline and will justify the person in charge's claim of being the defender of the people.

[jlturriff]

Re: So, about 25p per call

So, I guess that the laws that define how the penalties are set are based upon fixed penalties? Not even indexed to inflation? They need to be changed to penalties based upon percentage of the perpetrator's earnings; and then also, not a small percentage, that can be shrugged off. Tiny fines allow (almost encourages) these 'businesses' to continue to operate.

[ThatOne]

Re: So, about 25p per call

> the penalties are set are based upon fixed penalties

The penalties are set to numbers looking good in a headline. As I said earlier they won't be paid anyway, so at least they need to look good: Not too low, but still credible for the average reader (190k is a lot of money for average people, even if it's just pocket change for a millionaire or a big company).

[Anonymous Coward]

Another scum company

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/15295878

One director, company set up Nov 23, accounts have never been filed.

Sole director has been associated with numerous other companies, none of which ever filed accounts.A quick look at companies house using his name as a search gives over 15 associated companies, none of which has ever filed accounts, many of which have been started up and then dissolved 2 - 3 years later. Currently, I believe styles himself as an IT consultant on LinkedIn.

All the signs of a serial scammer.

https://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/people/Solomon-DEMAURICE/97106327

Companies House is an almost useless organisation that is a repository for scammers.

Start 'em up, run the scam, shut 'em down before compulsory strike off, start up with another name. Rinse & repeat.

[R Soul]

companies house correction

It runs a registry of company information, a job it does spectacularly badly. It relies on others - the cops, trading standards, ICO, TPS, etc - to identify the scammers and take legal action to get them struck off. CH isn't able to do that. And they probably shouldn't because that would make them judge, jury and executioner. Remember how that turned out at the Post Office.

CH can't even properly maintain the registry that's their prime responsibility. They're incompetent tossers.

BTW when scammers and other crooks do get struck off, which is almost never happens, they can start all over again and make their pet goldfish or Osama Bin Laden the new venture's person with significant control. The recently introduced identity checks at CH are useless gesture theatre too. The crooks can fold their business and register a new company with a fresh set of bogus directors whenever CH comes knocking at the door (unlikely) to ask why Al Capone or one of the Teletubbies hasn't supplied ID.

Start 'em up, run the scam, shut 'em down before compulsory strike off, start up with another name. Rinse & repeat.

Yup. CH will do nothing about that. Who collects the registration fees? Telcos won't do anything to stop nuisance calls. They make more money off these than anyone else.

[Roland6]

Re: companies house correction

>” Telcos won't do anything to stop nuisance calls. They make more money off these than anyone else.”

Be interest to know how they arranged their telco accounts and whether the telco’s actually got paid. Because surely the telco’s are doing checks and thus flagging the serial short lived businesses all with outstanding telco bill’s (surely the telco’s maintains a database of unpaid bills and customer insolvency) - it’s not like the background check process can’t be automated…

[PB90210]

Re: Another scum company

Companies House has changed a lot in the past few years.

It used to be that they had to accept, by law, the information given to them *without* question. This meant that suckers now saddled with mail, and worse, for dodgy firms now registered at their address and had to fight to get their addresses removed (sometimes they get named as directors, making things much worse).

They now have an online portal and have simplified removal

There is an episode of the BBC's Scam Secrets podcast about this - Fake Companies In My House

[Gavsky]

Oh, I thought it was an...adult site - 'Elderly Aids' (but with lots of XxXs appended, naturally). Gorgeous Gertie (79) can assist you during her instructional...performances. I expect an El Reg journalist will fully investigate, before making their excuses & leaving...

[IGotOut]

What next?

People realising the scam that is Incogni is owned by the same people that scrapes your information from 10's if not 100's of thousands of data points and sells it on.

That's right, people pay a company to remove data they collect.

https://thecybersecguru.com/online-privacy/who-owns-incogni-tesonet-data-broker-removal-services/

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Re: What next?

Thanks for the link, it was an interesting read. However, I have to quote from the article you linked to:

<blockqoute>Is Incogni a scam?

No, and I want to be direct about that, because it’s an easy accusation to make and a lazy one. </blockqoute>

I haven't got a dog in this fight at all, and I wouldn't pay anyone to try to make me incognito on the Internet, but there's nuance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Double glazing

I had a friend that used to do double glazing cold calling.

She used to regularly call me for a friendly chat.

She needed the money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Double glazing

A neighbour of mine was plagued by double glazing sales folk turning up for arranged appointments they hadn’t made.

The reason?

I’d been plagued by cold calls and didn’t like that neighbour.

[Sherrie Ludwig]

Re: Double glazing

In the USA, the plague cold-callers were aluminum siding appointment setters. Despite telling them I had a solid brick row house (terraced house in the UK?) without even a doghouse to side, they called for months. I finally accepted appointments for the three biggest offenders,all at the same time and date. As they arrived at my front door nearly simultaneously, I informed them that there was not even a dollhouse that could be sided in the entire street, and that since the company could not remove my number, or those of my neighbors, from their call lists, I or a neighbor will waste their time and petrol repeatedly for no possible profit. They went away angry, but they went away. And, so did the calls.

[Roland6]

Re: Double glazing

I feel sorry for the reps from one company - their company (a UK major), doesn’t tell them which addresses are pre-existing customers and thus a different sales pitch might be more appropriate and gain them some less hostile feedback.

[andy gibson]

Re: Double glazing

I used to invite them round to quote for a massive conservatory.

They got quite angry when they found out I'd lived in a second floor flat with no balcony.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Do not call lists

I've often wondered whether these "Do Not Call" lists are anything but free directories for scammers looking for active phone numbers.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge will help me out here but I'm assuming that they comprise some sort of downloadable database that legit companies can use to pare their call lists. Sounds like "scammer gold" to me, though, again, I haven't the slightest notion how the lists actually work.

In any event, we were on the US's national "Do Not Call" list, which, of course, did zip to block the scammers. If anything, the scam calls ratcheted up significantly.

We used to get three or four a day and even though I never answered a caller ID number I didn't recognize, they still kept at it.

I say "used to" because a couple of years ago we switched phone service providers after being out of our house for a year and a half during renovations and, for complicated reasons, we did not carry the old phone number forward. At the time I didn't even think of updating the "Do Not Call" registration.

White it was a minor pain to update the sundry records (doctor, dentist, credit card company, etc.) it turned out to pay off big time in. . . blissful silence.

We haven't had a single scam call since moving back in.

Go figure.

[ThatOne]

Re: Do not call lists

> even though I never answered a caller ID number I didn't recognize, they still kept at it

Doesn't matter. Your number was in their database, and a computer randomly selected it every now and then, called it automatically, and would had handed the call to a human (probably) if you had answered. Since you didn't answer, the number was put back in the "to be called" pool.

It's like with spam and email addresses: Once a phone number is in the "potential prospects" database, you will never ever find peace. My cousin was in that situation too: Despite never answering, her phone rang non-stop in the early morning, midday and late afternoon, times spammers though somebody might be home. Like you, she only found peace after changing her number.

[just4this]

I wonder...

If anyone is getting cold calls because Incogni found their data on a Do Not Call list and had it removed.

[JackTone]

The real question is whether the service blocks their own unsolicited calls.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I don’t have your number whitelisted

Don’t bother calling me.

It will only be left unanswered and added to the blacklist.

Sad that it’s come to this.

[Duffaboy]

I have a simple rule

If you are not in my address book the phone doesn't get answered, leave a VM and i will decide if i call you back

[Giles C]

Re: I have a simple rule

Yes I use the block feature built into the iPhone, however if you are expecting deliveries of large items then blocking the number of the driver inadvertently is not a good idea, but the feature goes back on when that have made the dropoff….

[APro]

Where's the Jail Time?

If I, as your basic non-business owning, non-contracting, over-taxed, royal subject decided to pester someone with phonecalls, no matter the subject of the calls - I'd be arrested and highly likely jailed based on some variation of stalking laws.

So why aren't these business owners/directors/CxOs jailed? Their audiance is captive, in that in this case the product sold is to block crap calls to the elderly and, sadly, are a required part of the user's safety these days. The calls have also been defined as "illegal", which means many crimes have been commited, and as such should go through the courts.

Yet another thing to go in my "If I was Prime Minister" list.

[Anonymous Coward]

So why aren't these business owners/directors/CxOs jailed?

Because that's how the law works.

Technically, it's the company which committed the crime - not the company's officers and shareholders. The company has its own legal identity, independent of its owners and management. Companies rarely, if ever, get prosecuted. They can almost literally get away with murder - well OK manslaughter. Nobody goes to jail when planes or trains crash, ships sink, people get crushed to death at football matches, etc.

Even if the authorities are minded to prosecute, they have to identify the controlling mind(s) in the boardroom and prove beyond reasonable doubt they are responsible. This is a very high burden of proof. Which gets even higher when paperwork gets "lost", board members "can't remember", all the stolen money's moved offshore and so on.

[itzman]

What I really love...

...Is the people fed up with (not of) email spam who then PAY another online company to TAKE THEIR DETAILS AWAY on the pretence that this will stop the OTHER spam.