Brit loan firm gets comeuppance for 7.7 million spam texts The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined a financial firm £130,000 after it sent out over seven million spam texts flogging credit cards. Manchester-based Intelligent Lending, trading as Ocean Finance, has also received an enforcement notice forcing it to stop sending out the spam, after it had sent out 7.7 …
"Fine should be £1 per spam text."
No, emulate the USA where victims are entitled to $500 statutory damages per call/SMS/fax. (tripled if the target is in the TPS/FPS, etc)
That makes it worthwhile for individuals to file in small claims. Death of 1 million paper cuts (and going bankrupt doesn't protect you from court awards)
Sadly many people feel they are the only one and finding out how to moan or complain can be a distraction they do not want. I have complained from time to time but it is not always easy or a very satisfactory process.
Icon suggests a better punishment for offenders.
It is a shame there is no 'do not spam' list anywhere.
Complaining about a text is easy, forward it to 7726 (SPAM).
You'll get a text back asking for the sender number if it wasn't forwarded on.
Used to do this quite a lot, not had to in at least 6 months though, wonder if that's because my number made it to the "don't send it here, he'll bother to forward it on as a complaint" list.
If this firm had actually audited the data from the third party and had signed contracts specifying that the data had to be all above board, etc. then they can happily pass on the fine (and there own fee on top) for breach of contract by the marketing firm. And guess what? They're laywers so that would be easy for them to do.
The fact that there not doing that, says quite clearly that they are talking out there a$$e$!
1,7p per text is hardly an appropriate punishment if you asked me. Maybe we should calculate it based on the fee these bastards charge per hour for their own time - what do lawyers go for these days? £1000/hour? So assume 30 seconds to look at text, mumble "bloody spam" and hit delete. 30 sec at £1000/hour thats £33,33 per text. So that would be a fee of £256,641,000. THAT sounds like a reasonable fee to me...
The "marketing firm" they bought the lists from was probably ZoomInfo.
It seems a fairly common source for idiot spammers, who don't realise ZoomInfo seems to assemble lists from scraping web pages, DNS records, etc. Literally useless data for effective marketing.
I don't know about you, but I always base my choice of credit cards on random unsolicited SMS texts from companies I've previously had no dealings with. I find it the most secure and reassuring method of handling my finances. This is why I am among the 99.96% of people who were bloody delighted to receive Ocean Finance's spam. Why must the moaning 0.04% spoil it for everyone?
That's right, I do live in the same crazy fantasy world that Ocean Finance's marketing director lives in.
> but I always base my choice of credit cards on random unsolicited SMS texts from companies I've
>previously had no dealings with
Much in the same way as I hire (even though I have nothing to do with recruitment) people based on random CVs sent to me by scumbags^W recruiters who have bought my work email address from the shysters^W marketing companies who run exhibitions[1].
[1] Yes - I was young and foolish once - sufficiently so to give my *actual* email address to companies as part of the exhibition signup. Never again.
>I'd like to know how many new credit cards were signed up as a result.
Sadly, we have a great many brain-dead people who would say: "Well, I have 5 or 10 credit cards already, and am in hopeless dept, I could do with another for that fancy foot bath massage thingy I saw on telly the other day - that lady in the ad was hot!!!! - and I still have room in the attic in case I do not actually need it ...
Then again, those who requested a card were not spammed, all the others were ...
Spam is an unsolicited mass mailing. It doesn't matter whether you want what is being sold or not, if you didn't sign up to receive the information it was spam. Some people are just dumb enough to respond to spam.
Regarding the size of the fine: it was most likely based on the profits made from the spamming, plus a bit extra.
The problem with many current database companies is they scrape data from each other and anywhere they can.
My employer is listed on a number of business lists but another unrelated company with the same company name but without "(UK)" is also on those lists, our artwork, website, contacts etc. are show against this other firm but trying to get the details cleaned up is pointless they just say "yes we will do that" and then do nothing. We get constant sales calls (despite being listed as no cold calls) for the other company, eventually to save time I looked up the contact for this multi million pound company on the same database and called them, turns out their "listed number" is actually a seamstress in Gloucester who is also tired of getting calls.
It's bollocks but the online database company (allegedly) leave the incorrect details on their site so they can charge £10 for "further details". Then other firms are sold, or seed their data from this list.
The other thing is name, my name is the same as a chap who runs some company in London, we are constantly getting offers of data lines for central London, despite being in the south west.
Databases are valuable it seems, even if full of ordure.
"a very small minority of consumers found our SMS marketing for the Ocean Credit Card last year unwelcome."
As other have said, Ocena are effectively saying that anyone who didn't complain must have "welcomed" the marketing drivel. What pant does this guy live on? If 99.96% of recipients "welcomed" this "message", how come the directors of Ocean have not retired to private Caribbean islands on the commissions from 4,500,000+ newly issued Capital One credit cards?
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