British regulators penalize premium providers for malware

The British regulator PhonepayPlus (an independent organization dedicated to the supervision of standards in the field of providing premium subscriptions) fined A1 $ 78,000 for A1 Agregator, which deals with premium subscriptions in the form of sending SMS to short numbers. The reason for the penalty was to ensure that the provider of payment for messages in the infected applications, including fake (disguised as Angry Birds and other popular games), in which an SMS with a cost of 5 pounds was sent each time the application was opened (three messages were sent). The reason for the investigation was a complaint of a British citizen who discovered a significant withdrawal of funds from the account.

The malicious fake applications themselves (denoted by Lookout anti-virus lab as Ru-Fraud) were distributed through the Android Market (were removed by Google in December 2011), as well as through a number of third-party application directories. In addition to collecting a fine, the regulator decided to return all payments made to all victims of fraud, and also forbade holding any premium subscriptions without the special permission of the regulator.

What do you think, dear habra users, should mobile operators and premium providers be responsible for such “services” (because sometimes such malicious applications open a license agreement window indicating premium payment), or it’s necessary to calculate the attackers themselves, and also what do you do if you stumble upon such a scam? Where do you complain and where do you send reports?

Source PhonepayPlus via Information Week .