Firm which ‘sent thousands of spam texts’ gets £40k fine

AFINANCIAL company has been hit with a £40,000 fine after being found responsible for sending thousands of spam texts promoting loans.

Monevo Limited, based at Oxford Road, Macclesfield, sent 44,172 unsolicited marketing texts in just three months, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The law says that businesses must have obtained specific consent from people confirming they are willing to receive marketing texts from, or on behalf of, their firm.

Monevo Limited did not have this consent, the ICO said.

An ICO investigation was prompted by 130 complaints from mem- bers of the public between April and June 2016.

Steve Eckersley, the head of enforcement at ICO, said: “Nobody wants to be bombarded with text messages they didn’t agree to receive.

“That’s why the law is clear.

“Businesses must be able to confirm that people have given their permission to receive text messages or emails – and they must have the evidence to prove it.”

The investigation found that privacy notices on the competition and money saving websites were generic and unspecific.

In one example it said data collected would be shared with unspecified third parties ranging from home improvement companies to health and beauty services.

But none of these sites indicated the data would be used for sending marketing text messages from Monevo.

Mr Eckersley added: “It is not acceptable to rely on assurances given by suppliers.

“Businesses need to make rigorous checks that personal data used on their behalf is used fairly and lawfully, and must be certain that they have the necessary consent.”

If you are unhappy about receiving unsolic- ited marketing text messages you can report them to the GSMA’s spam reporting service by forwarding the message to 7726 (spelling out ‘SPAM’).

After the ruling, spokesperson for Monevo said: “We were disappointed with the ICO’s decision to uphold their notice to fine Monevo as we do not believe we have caused any breach – our third party supplier is regulated by the ICO and was the data controller.

“Most importantly they did not have our consent to send the messages, so we no longer work with this supplier and are considering our legal position as they acted without our authority.

“We reviewed our due diligence processes last year when we first spoke to the ICO and are now confident that this situation won’t be repeated.”