During the last three years, SmsCoin project provides MT-subscriptions in countries such as Lithuania, Latvia, Germany and Israel. This year Russian Federation joined the above-mentioned list.

The amount of complaints from Russian subscribers who use MT-subscriptions offered by a certain contet-providers increased significantly in the first half of 2010. The service works as follows: user purchases a subscription for receiving messages from various services by sending an SMS message to a short code specified on the website. As a result, user pays for each and every message sent to his/her phone number from a certain website for a period of time set by the source owners. The reason for users' numerous complaints was in fact incorrect text for terms of services, which caused confusion amongst subscribers that could not understand why their phones were billed repeatedly. Moreover, this situation gave a free hand for many fraudsters who took advantage of this confusion, and numerous subscribers, misled by unclear text, eventually found out that they have been subscribed long after the funds disappeared from their mobile phones.

Due to frequent fraud incidents in MT-subscription sector, mobile carriers introduced a series of severe measures such as major fines imposed on content-providers in addition to increased service monitoring and its terms of use. To be more specific, starting August 2010 MTS mobile carrier established new rules as follows: those partners who provide service based on "Subscription" model according to regulations for advertising and communication, must present the subscriber with necessary information prior to service delivery where it is clearly specified that he/she purchased a subscription, and to obtain subscriber's consent to receive this information. Namely, to enable the subscriber to confirm his/her readiness to receive subscription services (by sending a message or confirming it on your website).

The above-mentioned requirements are identical for companies without any exceptions.

Fortunately, these rules are slightly different from the rules introduced by SmsCoin project. Thus, our partners do not have to radically change their approach to delivering services to their subscribers.

All the above-mentioned requirements will be valid starting 27th of August this year.

Please make sure that your services are in accordance with new requirements – simply contact your personal manager for further details.