NTT DoCoMo yesterday won damages against a spammer who sent
millions of e-mails to customers of the Japanese mobile phone
giant's I-mode service. Incredibly, of 950 million e-mails sent
over the service each day, 880 million are sent to non-existent
addresses.
The case was decided in a Tokyo court and reported today by
on-line publication Mainichi Interactive. According to the site,
NTT DoCoMo won compensation of 6.56 million yen (almost £35,000)
against the spammer, the country's first award of its kind.
NTT DoCoMo charges recipients of e-mail sent over the i-mode
system, which has over 37 million subscribers. However, because the
spam was sent to four million addresses that did not exist, NTT
DoCoMo did not receive any revenue and, it argued, spent 1.2 yen
(around half a pence) dealing with each e-mail.
The company, which has been a global pioneer of mobile phone
technology, also announced today that it will soon begin marketing
the WRISTOMO. This, it says, will be "the world's first commercial
wristwatch-style" mobile phone. It will enable users to send and
receive e-mails of up to 6,000 characters via the internet at a
data transfer rate of 64 kbps.
