Vietnam: Penalties for violations against regulations on provision of promotional email/message services and advertising calls

Article 33 of the Decree No. 91/2020/NĐ-CP of Vietnam’s Government supplements Points c, d, dd, e to Clause 1; Point e to Clause 2; Points l, m, n, o to Clause 3 of Article 95, Clauses 3a, 3b, 4a to Article 95 of Decree No. 15/2020/NĐ-CP prescribing penalties for administrative violations against regulations on postal services, telecommunications, radio frequencies, information technology and electronic transactions. Thus, from October 10, 2020, penalties for violations against regulations on provision of promotional email/message services and message-based content services are specified as follows:

- A fine ranging from VND 10,000,000 to VND 20,000,000 shall be imposed for the commission of one of the following violations:

+ Failing to establish a website using “.vn” domain name of Vietnam when providing promotional email services, or Internet-based messaging services, or message-based content services;

+ Failing to provide adequate and clear service-related information on the website before such services are provided for users, consisting of: name of service, corresponding order code, description of service, using method, corresponding service charge, instructions for service termination, customer service numbers, and commitments to use service.

+ Failure to provide tools and applications for users to report and block spam emails themselves;

+ Failure to have measures to block, filter, update sources of spam emails or failure to have solutions to prevent loss and accidental blocking of users’ email addresses;

+ Failure to monitor, inspect and scan their emailing servers to make sure they are not on the sources of spam emails;

+ Failure to prepare periodic reports and statistics as prescribed by competent authorities.

- A fine ranging from VND 20,000,000 to VND 30,000,000 shall be imposed for the commission of one of the following violations:

+ Providing promotional email or message services or message-content services or Internet-based messaging services before obtaining a management code as prescribed;

+ Failing to provide readable information in Vietnamese on prices/charges and suitable equipment or providing information on the charges which does not match or close the order code or whose size is smaller than 2/3 of the order code’s size when giving advertisements or providing information about message-based content services, award-winning messaging, rating programs or donation or contribution programs by messaging on printed newspapers, television newspapers, online newspapers, websites, Internet, messages and/or emails;

+ Failing to provide information on charge rates before charging calls to premium-rate service numbers or enquiry service numbers;

+ Failing to instruct subscribers to notify spam messages and reply to received notifications of spam messages;

+ Insufficiently retaining data on provided message-based content services as prescribed;

+ Failure to compile, update and share blacklists of IP addresses/domains sending spam emails with AIS and other providers of telecommunications and/or Internet services.

- A fine ranging from VND 50,000,000 to VND 70,000,000 shall be imposed for the commission of one of the following violations:

+ Failing to use a server located in Vietnam when providing service/product-related information via emails;

+ Failing to use servers located in Vietnam when providing Internet-based messaging services;

+ Failing to use the granted messaging numbers as prescribed when providing service/product-related information via messages;

+ Providing promotional email/message services but failing to establish a system for receiving and handling requests for refusal to receive promotional emails/messages;

+ Failing to provide free of charge the function to receive notifications of spam messages or emails from users;

+ Failing to operate a spam prevention system capable of preventing spam messages by sender source or key words shown in messages;

+ Failing to provide message sending and receiving services or message sending and receiving services with identification names to service providers that have been issued with management codes;

+ Failing to allow enterprises that are issued with management codes to make connections with technical systems for providing services;

+ Failing to retain data on provided message-based content services as prescribed;

+ Failing to provide information on charge rates when users make calls to premium-rate service numbers or enquiry service numbers.

+ Failure to provide tools and application for users to report and block spam messages and spam calls themselves;

+ Failure to provide, update and share samples of spam messages with AIS and other providers of telecommunications services;

+ Failure filter IP addresses/domains that send or are used to send spam emails under their management;

+ Failure to evaluate the seriousness of spam messages and spam calls on their telecommunications networks.

- A fine ranging from VND 50,000,000 to VND 70,000,000 shall be imposed for use of a brand name that is not issued by Authority of Information Security or that has been issued by AIS to another organization or individual without the latter’s consent; use of a revoked brand name.

- A fine ranging from VND 70,000,000 to VND 100,000,000 shall be imposed for use of a brand name for sending spam messages or providing illegal services as concluded by a competent authority.

- A fine ranging from VND 140,000,000 to VND 170,000,000 shall be imposed for charging error messages, unreplied messages or messages with replied contents which do not match order codes announced by the enterprise or messages of cheated users.

- A fine ranging from VND 140,000,000 to VND 170,000,000 shall be imposed for the commission of any of the following violations:

+ Failure to have measures to block advertising messages and advertising calls to the Do-Not-Call Register;

+ Failure to block and revoke electronic addresses used for sending spam messages, spam emails or making spam calls at the request of competent authorities;

+ Failure to develop and operate anti-spam systems;

+ Failure to establish and connect their brand name management system to the National Brandname Management System;

+ Failure to comply with requests of AIS regarding prevention and handling of spam messages, spam emails and spam calls and implementation of other professional measures.

Moreover, the provision of services shall be suspended for a fixed period of 01 – 03 months or the rights to use management codes shall be revoked for a fixed period of 01 – 03 months in some cases.

View more details at the Decree No. 91/2020/NĐ-CP of Vietnam’s Government, issued on August 14, 2020.

Le Vy

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