Fine up to VND 80 million for sending or spreading spam emails and messages

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This Decree stipulates monetary fines ranging from VND 60,000,000 to VND 80,000,000 for acts of sending or disseminating spam emails, spam messages, and malware. Additionally, for these acts, apart from monetary fines, supplementary punishment measures and remedial actions may also be applied, such as: Suspension of service provision activities from 01 month to 03 months; revocation of the right to use management codes and identification names from 01 month to 03 months; mandatory reclamation of telecommunication numbers due to these violations. (Currently, according to Decree 174/2013/ND-CP, the amount fined for acts of sending or disseminating spam messages only ranges from VND 40,000,000 to VND 50,000,000)

Thus, Decree 15 has significantly increased the monetary fine level for acts of sending or disseminating spam messages compared to the current regulations. It is evident that this increase in fines is absolutely necessary to curb the widespread, indiscriminate sending of advertising messages and spam messages, which negatively affect users.

Additionally, the monetary fine ranging from VND 60,000,000 to VND 80,000,000 mentioned above also applies to the following violations:

- Not providing adequate mechanisms for refusing to receive advertising emails or advertising messages;- Creating a large number of missed calls to lure users into calling back or texting to content service numbers for profit or to provide information and advertising;- Exploiting and utilizing service numbers and telecommunication subscribers improperly for purposes;- Service numbers for free calls and high-rate calls allowing outgoing calls or for sending and receiving messages.

Especially, the monetary fine will range from VND 80,000,000 to VND 100,000,000 for acts of advertising via email or via message or providing SMS service over the Internet without a system to receive and handle recipients' refusal requests. Specifically, for acts of not blocking or reclaiming subscriber numbers used to disseminate spam messages, the monetary fine will range from VND 180,000,000 to VND 200,000,000.

Nguyen Trinh

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