Two companies fined for sending out spam texts
Two North West companies have been fined under the Data Protection Act for sending out multiple unsolicited marketing texts.
Finance broker TFLI Ltd, based at Bollington, near Macclesfield, was fined £80,000 by the Information Commissioners Office for transmitting more than 1.2 million texts, 1.19 million of which were received.
The Information Commissioner received 793 complaints about the texts.
The texts read: “Need funds today? Loans from ;100 – ;1500, spread the re-payments over 1 – 12 months” followed by a link.
When followed, the link in the message took recipients to a loan website.
TFLI’s marketing campaigns were based upon data provided by third party affiliate companies.
The commissioner found that the company contravened regulation 22 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2003 (PECR).
The second company fined under the same legislation is insurance products comparison website company Goody Market Ltd, based at Waterloo in Liverpool.
It was ordered to pay £40,000 for sending out 170,000 unsolicited marketing text messages, of which 111,367 were received. The Information Commissioner received 93 complaints.
As in the prior case, the texts were sent on the basis of data sourced from a third party and bought on behalf of Good Market by a data broker.
In both cases the Information Commissioner said that TFLI did not deliberately contravene regulation 22.
