April 10, 2017

Separate ICO investigations have resulted in PRS Media, trading as Purus Digital, being fined £140,000 for sending around 4.4 million spam texts and Xternal Property Renovations being fined £80,000 for making nuisance phone calls.

The ICO found that Dyfed firm PRS Media, trading as Purus Digital, did not have the consent of the 4.4 million people it sent marketing texts to. The company, based in Dale in Haverfordwest, said that the information used to send the text messages had been obtained from its own competition website.

People were required to sign up to marketing as a condition of entering competitions on the firm’s website. This is not proper consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, the ICO reminds readers.

The website’s privacy policy told people their details would be shared with third parties, which is not specific enough. People must give consent to receive marketing text messages. People must have a genuine choice over whether or not to consent to marketing.

Glasgow firm Xternal Property Renovations broke the law by making more than 109,000 calls to people registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

The ICO found that the company, which provides property and maintenance repairs services, should have screened the list of people it planned to call against the details of TPS subscribers and made sure its telesales staff knew how to comply with the law.

Xternal Property Renovations has also been issued with a legal notice compelling it to stop instigating the unlawful marketing calls.

Ken Macdonald, Head of ICO Regions, said: “Nuisance marketing, whether it’s by calls to people’s landline or mobile, or through spam texts, causes disruption, annoyance and, in the worst cases, serious upset. We issue fines like these to firms behind nuisance marketing to send a clear message that such action will not be tolerated.

“The ICO is looking forward to the commencement of our new powers, announced by the government last year, which will allow us to fine the directors of nuisance marketing firms as well as the companies themselves. This will enable us to take even more of a stand against the firms causing distress and intrusion to people’s lives.” To read the ICO press release in full and for links to the monetary penalty notices, click here.