Calling for advertising outside the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. can be fined up to 100 million VND
(Dan Tri) - Decree No. 330/2026/ND-CP has just issued regulations on many levels of penalties for spam messages, spam calls and advertising calls that violate regulations.
Advertising calls annoy users (Illustration: The Anh).
In fact, the situation of mobile users constantly being bothered by calls touting real estate, stocks, and insurance during their off hours has become a persistent problem.
Faced with this situation, the Government issued Decree No. 330/2026/ND-CP regulating administrative penalties for violations in the field of cybersecurity and personal data protection, establishing strict sanctions for acts of annoying users, effective from August 19.
Tighten advertising calling behavior
One of the notable highlights in Article 37 of the Decree is the establishment of clear boundaries on the time frame and frequency of marketing to subscribers.
Specifically, advertising units are only allowed to make advertising calls from 08:00 to 17:00 and send advertising messages from 07:00 to 22:00 every day (unless otherwise agreed with the user).
Do not make more than 1 advertising call to 1 phone number and no more than 3 advertising messages to 1 phone number (or 3 emails to 1 email address) within 24 hours unless otherwise agreed with the user.
The act of calling or texting outside the time frame or exceeding the allowed frequency will be fined from 30 to 50 million VND for individuals (specified in article 37). In case an organization violates, the applicable fine is doubled (stipulated in Clause 1, Article 7). Thus, the highest fine is up to 100 million VND for organizations that commit this violation.
Clause 7, Article 37 stipulates a fine of 90-100 million VND for telecommunications and Internet enterprises that do not prevent and revoke subscriber numbers used to distribute spam messages and spam calls according to regulations.
Heavy fine if calling on "No advertising list"
Besides, people's right to refuse to receive advertising is strengthened. According to Point b, Clause 6, Article 37, the act of sending advertising messages or calling advertising to subscriber numbers on the No-Advertisement List will be fined from 80 to 90 million VND for individuals (violating organizations will be fined from 160 to 180 million VND).
In addition to fines, violating individuals and organizations may also be subject to additional sanctions such as suspension of the right to use identifiers for 1 to 3 months and remedial measures to force the recall of violating phone numbers according to regulations.
In addition, Decree No. 330/2026/ND-CP also attaches strict legal responsibilities to businesses providing telecommunications infrastructure.
Article 38 of the Decree stipulates that telecommunications enterprises providing voice over Internet (VoIP) and SIP Trunk services are required to deploy or maintain a technical mechanism to automatically block all SIP Trunk and VolP traffic that generates calls to the public telecommunications network but does not have a valid Voice Brandname according to regulations.
At the same time, the network must monitor, analyze and detect abnormal traffic and promptly warn, suspend or terminate service provision for customers showing signs of spam, fraud or impersonation calls.
If they do not comply with these technical obligations, telecommunications businesses will be fined 50-70 million VND, and will also be subject to an additional sanction of suspension of providing SIP Trunk and VoIP services from 01 to 03 months.
If users are called out for illegal advertising, how can users respond?
According to the provisions of Article 38, organizations must be responsible for providing users with tools and applications to report spam messages and spam calls and allow users to proactively prevent spam messages and spam calls. If the organization does not provide it, it will be fined from 20,000,000 VND to 30,000,000 VND.
Notably, Article 37 also stipulates that businesses must provide users with tools to look up or store agreements on registration and refusal of advertising calls and advertising registration messages to serve inspection, examination and resolution of complaints and denunciations.
Thus, according to the provisions of the Decree, users can use tools/applications provided by the network to report spam calls or violating advertising calls.