Mortgage broker fined £50,000 for sending more than 174,000 spam messages

PEOPLE WERE NOT GIVEN OPTION TO OPT OUT

A NORTHERN Lincolnshire mortgage broker has been fined £50,000 for bombarding people with thousands of unwanted spam texts.

OSL Financial Consultancy Limited sent at least 174,000 texts to people without giving them the option to opt out from receiving the messages. The Barnetby-based company, which trades as MortgageKey, didn’t have consent to send the messages about a drop in Buy to Let mortgage interest rates.

It gathered personal data from people who had used the website for a quote, and used the data for marketing.

The Information Commissioner’s Office, an information rights watchdog, began investigating after a number of people reported the messages as spam. It had been carrying out a wider probe into companies who took advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic with nuisance marketing.

The watchdog found 54,205 nuisance texts were sent during the pandemic, with 120,137 nuisance texts sent in the previous months.

The mortgage broker claimed it had consent from customers stomers to send the messages, but the e ICO found that people couldn’t opt in or out and hadn’t provided valid consent. nsent.

It ruled the Barnetby rnetby company had broken electronic c marketing law and has fined it £50,000. 00.

Natasha Longson, son, ICO Investigations Group Manager nager said: “The rules about electronic marketing are simple and clear. Consent sent must be freely given and it must not be a condition of receiving a service. “Nuisance texts, calls and emails are an unwanted and annoying intrusion into people’s lives and we will continue to take action against those that do not comply with the law.”

OSL has not responded to a request for a comment.

Anyone who has received nuisance texts, calls or emails can report them to the ICO online or on their hotline 0303 123 1113. You can also report unwanted texts but forwarding them to 7726 (‘SPAM’).