Ofcom restricts issue of numbers to scammers

[El Gringo]

http://www.aimelink.org/newsdisplay.aspx?id=1819
REGULATION Ofcom restricts issue of numbers to CPs that have ‘previous’
30 September 2008

Ofcom is introducing new restrictions on the way that it issues telephone numbers to communications providers to ensure the best use of numbers and to better protect consumers from scams, fraud and other forms of abuse.

The regulator is implementing a new consumer protection test for numbers, which will focus on the behaviour that uses numbers to cause serious or repeated harm to consumers.

The regulator will identify and publish lists of individuals and companies that have a history of using numbers to cause serious or repeated harm and will not allocate 070 personal numbers, 0871/2/3 special service higher rate numbers and 09 premium rate numbers to applicants who are on those lists.

The lists, which will be published on the Ofcom website, will name companies and individuals that have in the past used telephone numbers to cause serious or repeated harm to consumers or are involved in cases that we are currently investigating.

In compiling the lists, Ofcom will assess individuals and companies – including company directors – that have come to its attention by being subject to a decision from a relevant authority, such as PhonepayPlus, the Office of Fair Trading or the police, and where telephone numbers were central to the behaviour that led to the decision concerned.

Scams, frauds and other abuses carried out by individuals and companies using telephone numbers cause serious consumer harm and threaten confidence in certain numbers.

Ofcom has decided, at least initially, to permit providers to take a self-regulatory approach to introducing a similar consumer protection test into their own number assignment processes.

Ofcom's full statement can be found at
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/cond...cpt/statement/

about bloody time

[Hamlet]

(29 Jun 2004 Westminster Hall )

"The real problem however was the subsequent reluctance and in effect refusal by One World Interactive to provide us with the service provider information for the number range in question."
Why in heaven's name is Ofcom or ICSTIS allowing One World Interactive to go on issuing 090 numbers if it refuses to co-operate?
Service providers get away with the scam only because of shoddy work by a few TNOs, but ICSTIS seemed reluctant to act. On 10 June, it told me that
"we are involved in three enforcement actions against terminating networks who have failed to provide us with information or who have failed to prevent access to services when so instructed or who have failed to withhold payments when told to do so."
Those are the companies that issue the numbers; they should be thrown out. (...)

Originally Posted by Sir George Young

F**kin' long four years later... And one of the OWI managers was the founder of German self-regulation. It's so ridiculous.

[mike99]

No mention, however, of not issuing shortcodes to crooks, only 070, 08, and 09 number ranges.