The Wise Monkeys

So it’s been a while, we are all well aware of this. Today I bring some good news - some damn good news regarding out “friends” the scammers at DC Marketing.

“A MOBILE phone marketing company has been fined almost $150,000 over spamming practices that affected thousands of people over the past 12 months.”

Poor DC Marketing, this is such a shame. It is thanks to the public and media who supported us through this campaign against DC Marketing that this has happened.

….The monkeys may have something big coming up soon, so please keep in touch.

Update (Posted by skelm): View the SMH article here.

Thanks to Andy of BigBuddaBoom, pmcmahon, Dallas of mith.com.au, Ray, Jivlain, all of the guys at Enya and anyone else that has told us about the Australian I.T. story on Missed call marketing.

You can see the story here: http://australianit.news.com.au/arti…^15306,00.html and here: http://australianit.news.com.au/arti…nbv%5e,00.html.

Our forum entry on this can be found here: http://www.4wisemonkeys.com/community/showthread.php?t=154.

Thanks guys!

The 4 Wise Monkeys have been tracking now for way to long is the DC Marketing ‘Ring Once’ and hang up leaving a ‘Missed Call’ notification on your mobile phone hoping that you will be ‘socially engineered’ into returning the call. A full list of the numbers that you may receive these calls from is listed over on the number index page (click here for link). If you return the call which is to a local number you are billed accordingly by your mobile telephony provider at the standard rate. The recorded message you hear if you do call this number will prompt you to dial a 190x-xxx-xxx telephone number that you are then billed at premium rates that are disclosed in the recorded message that you have just heard.

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Despite the claims of Ingo Gruber from DC Marketing that this website and the media have not affected his business we have noticed some rather big changes.

First of all, not long after our recent media exposure - DCM Communications changed their contact information (We will be making a new post with current contact information in the coming days whilst we find what we can in the public sector).

The following news posting was made on their sister site (vrpan.com):

Mail Addresses

Due to a spam attack on our mailboxes, all mail addresses on this site to contact us have been changed. Please look T&C for new mail addresses to contact us!

We have also noticed that a number of numbers have been taken out of circulation - That’s not saying that they aren’t still running their unethical operation - That is just saying that they are cutting back (a lot).

And to top it off, Ingo continues to claim we have not affected him AT ALL! All whilst he makes a daily comment on the website (click here to read the latest comments).

Thanks to everyone sending us mail - We appreciate the support and offers for help. We are striving to answer every e-mail but given the sheer volume of them it may take us two or three days to get back! Also, anyone who is informing us about various DC Marketing practices or other unethical businesses / scams should include a link to their webpage (if you have one) which we will add in our posting. Cheers guys!

Wow… Who would have thought that we would have had this much support from the public. When we started fighting this we really had no idea how big DC Marketings scam is. It is great to see the Australian public band together to fight this… Now enough of that, and on to the juicy stuff:

4 Wise Monkeys has done an interview with A Current Affair detailing our involvement in fighting the DC Marketing scam (Yes Mr. Gruber, I do beleive this is a scam and will call it a scam if that is how I feel: A scam by definition: “A ploy by a shyster to raise money.” or “A confidence trick, confidence game, or con for short (also known as a scam)”). A Current Affair has also done some great work with the research they have done as well as the information we have provided. You can watch this tonight after 6:30 (i’ve no idea what exact time it will be on) on Channel 9.

DC Marketing, sit down, enjoy the show and then be happy that you still have your “happy customer base” (really, how can you keep saying you have a ‘customer base’ when you are using missed call marketing practices?)

Yesterday I reported that we were receiving tons of e-mail from you guys about new DC Marketing numbers (click here for link)… Well, as it turns out - All of you were reporting only two differant numbers.

I have called both of these back, and yes, the same old Simon is still around!

The two numbers are (03) 8102 9563 and (02) 8404 2293. I have also split the DC Phone scam page (click here for link) up into old numbers and new numbers to make it easier for newcomers coming to the website.

Hello again! I just finished an interview with Conor from The World Today (612AM) about DC Marketing and Call-Australia which should be aired at 12:00 lunchtime today! As a reminder the Triple J interview (click here for link) should also be on ‘the hack’ this afternoon providing that their lawyers approve the story.

update: This went to air and was almost as good as planned! Unfortunately a lot of our finidngs couldn’t be mentioned as their legal team rejected it (it isn’t all information in the public domain)…. We think this is also the same reason why the interview for ‘The hack’ is taking so long to come to air. - skelm

Wow, this is crazy! We have been absolutely inundated with e-mails today about possible new DC Marketing numbers! Rest assured we are following up on all the e-mails you guys have been sending us (50+ today but please keep them coming!) and will report back with an updated number list by tomorrow afternoon (when we go on Triple J).

Thanks for the feedback! Every bit of information or insight you guys give us helps!