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ICO fines financial firm for sending unsolicited texts

The ICO has fined Monevo Limited, a finance brokerage firm, £40,000 for sending unsolicited marketing texts without proper consent. Between April 2016 and June 2016, the company sent 44,172 texts encouraging people to apply for loans and 130 complaints were made, prompting the ICO investigation.

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, businesses must obtain specific consent from people confirming that they are willing to receive marketing texts from, or on behalf of, their firm. In this instance the ICO found that company did not have such consent. Instead, the personal details were obtained from competition and money saving websites, which contained generic privacy notices stating that data collected would be shared with unspecified third parties. None of the websites indicated the data would be used for sending marketing text messages from the company.

FIN. Team