Context
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined OSL Financial Consultancy Limited (OSL), a mortgage and loans broker trading as MortgageKey, £50,000 for illegally sending 174,342 nuisance marketing texts.
Key points to note
- This came to the attention of the ICO as part of its probe into companies taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic with nuisance marketing.
- Between March and June 2020, the ICO identified a number of complaints about OSL that had been sent to the 7726 spam text reporting service.
- The complaints related to nuisance text messages received by the public about a drop in Buy to Let mortgage interest rates.
- The ICO investigation found 54,205 nuisance texts were sent during the pandemic, with 120,137 nuisance texts sent in the months earlier.
- Throughout the ICO’s enquiries, OSL relied on the previous consent it said it had obtained from its customers.
- The ICO’s investigation found OSL had gathered personal data from people who had contacted them via their website to obtain a quote and then used the data for marketing purposes.
- People were not offered the option to opt in or out of marketing, and the ICO concluded that valid consent had not been obtained which is against electronic marketing law.
Next actions
Firms need to ensure that where personal data is used for marketing activities that this is conducted in compliance with the appropriate regulations, with valid consent and that individuals are offered an option to opt in or out of their details being used for marketing purposes.