ICPEN, founded in 1992, consists of consumer enforcement agencies from 31 countries co-ordinating cross border activity and sharing best practice. The Office of Fair Trading, which is the UK's representative in ICPEN, this year holds the presidency for the organisation. On Friday it hosted a conference in London for the group at which the results of two internet sweeps were announced.
The first of these addressed mobile phone services that target children, ranging from logos and ring tones to pictures and games. It covered 14 countries, including the UK, Norway, Canada, Germany and Australia.
The sweep found that concerns that web sites were not making the terms of their contracts clear were justified: 31% did not give sufficient information on the prices being charged, 30% did not give clear information about necessary technical adjustments that would need to be made to a consumer's phone, and in 22% of cases no information was given on how to cancel the agreements.
Another point of concern was that only 6% of the web sites displayed an age limit for those entering it, while 46% of the sites had unsuitable content for the assumed target group, such as violence, erotic elements, alcohol and tobacco.
The second sweep related to scams and misleading advertising. Known as "Too good to be true", the results of the sweep were announced in April this year, when enforcement action had not been fully taken.
According to the OFT, the sweep has now resulted in 320 sites being closed or amended, 440 warning letters being sent to traders, and five court enforceable undertakings. At present there are 307 web sites still under investigation.
In the UK, eight web sites were closed, 27 forced to change their sites and 40 are still under investigation, said the OFT.
"We can see from the sweep results that working with consumer enforcement agencies in other countries has delivered real tangible results in tackling cross border scams," said Christine Wade, Director of Consumer Regulation and Enforcement at the OFT and President of ICPEN.
The OFT is hosting another conference today and together with the US Federal Trade Commission has brought together consumer protection, data protection and telecommunications agencies from over 20 countries to promote cross-border cooperation on spam and spam-related problems, such as on-line fraud and computer viruses.
"Spam is not just annoying and intrusive. It gets in the way of legitimate e-commerce, and is often a vehicle for scams and computer viruses," said John Vickers, OFT Chairman.
"International collaboration by enforcement agencies, the efforts of the computer and communications industries, and smart consumers at home (who take steps to protect themselves) are all needed to combat the internet scammers," he added.