The LADH has been fined £50,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and issued an enforcement notice after sending individuals direct market ‘spam’ text messages.
Financial services company LADH sent “tens of thousands of spam text messages, in breach of Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR).
Between March and April of 2022, LADH sent over 31,000 unsolicited text messages in just six weeks.
Examples of these text messages:
“Free Debt Help can consolidate your unaffordable payments, write off up to 85% of your total debt Check if you qualify text HELP or Stop2Stop.”
"FREE Government Debt Help can consolidate your unaffordable debt and write off up to 85% of your total debt. Check if you qualify by texting help."
Furthermore, subscribers couldn’t opt out of these text messages – which is unlawful, the ICO claimed in a recent report.
Those who received unwanted text messages filed complaints – in which there were 106 – to the Mobile UK’s Spam Reporting Service.
An investigation was soon in action, and the LADH claimed to receive “verbal assurance that the data it had received from a third party contained details of people who had consented to be contacted.”
This isn’t the first time that a large organization has been fined by the ICO for sending unsolicited messages to subscribers.
HelloFresh, the popular meal kit delivery service, was fined £140,000 for sending 79 million spam emails and one million spam texts in seven months.
This falls under a ‘breach of trust’ as subscribers were unaware of what they signed up for.
“The marketing messages were sent based on an opt-in statement which did not make any reference to the sending of marketing via text,” the ICO writes.
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