An 18-month crackdown carried out by 27 European Union member states, along with Norway and Iceland, resulted in 159 sites correcting problems and 54 closing down.

The investigation involved a total of 554 sites, of which 301 were found to breach EU consumer rules.

"This EU-wide investigation was a direct response to hundreds of complaints from parents and consumers from many different EU countries," European consumer commissioner Meglena Kouneva said on November 17 2009 at the presentation of the results of the sweep.

The investigation checked 22 Bulgarian websites, of which 21 were initially flagged for further investigation and of which 14 were found to breach European consumer regulation.

The co-ordinated crackdown focused on three main types of problems; missing, incomplete or unclear pricing, a failure to provide complete trader information, and misleading advertising, in particular advertising ring-tones as "free" when consumers were in fact tied to a paid subscription.

More than half the offending websites specifically targeted children, using children's cartoon characters, well-known TV characters or required parental consent.

"Young people should not have to fall victim to scams like misleading advertising that lure them into ring-tone subscriptions they thought were free. And parents should not find nasty surprises in their phone bill, when their children by accident have signed up to more than they have bargained for," Kouneva said.

The most frequent offence was the lack of contact information for the trader. While almost half the offending sites provided incomplete or unclear pricing information, more than a third of the sites had been found to provide misleading information, including advertising ring-tones for free when they were tied to paid subscriptions.

Additionally, the Consumer Protection Directorate of the Italian Antitrust Authority fined nine companies found to be in breach of the rules for a total amount of two million euro.

Paolo Saba, director general of the Consumer Protection Directorate of the Italian Antitrust Authority, said that "for the Italian Competition Authority, this enforcement initiative achieved important results in the interests of consumers making online and cross-border transactions. The results represent an important step towards more effective protection of European consumers and a more integrated European consumer protection policy".

According to Kouneva, "this kind of EU joint enforcement co-operation is the future for EU consumer policy in Europe".

Kouneva said the results were "a very promising sign for the future".