ICO whacks Welsh biz with £350k fine for 150 million nuisance calls A Welsh firm responsible for 146 million nuisance PPI calls has been slapped with a £350,000 fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office - not that the data watchdog is confident that penalty will be paid. Your Money Rights (YMR) - which had its authorisation as a claims management company cancelled in May - instigated 146, …
FFS. Does anyone read the full article these days?
"In an effort to stop businesses dodging the financial bullet in this way, the government last year announced that it would introduce a new law to allow the ICO to penalise a company’s directors for their firm’s nuisance calls."
FFS. Does anyone read the full article these days?
@ Lost all faith...
Do you really believe the pathetic, beleaguered, out-of-their-depth wankers of the current government will draft and pass such a law? It certainly wasn't in the Queen's Speech, I doubt there's time in the parliamentary calendar, I sense no political enthusiasm, and I can see nothing in the draft of the UK Data Protection Bill that covers the situation where a penalty against a company cannot be recovered due to insolvency or winding up.
I'd like to be mistaken, but I believe this is just another shitty, insincere promise by politicians that they never intended to honour.
People read the article, but you don't read the comments.
The article simply says "introduce a new law to allow the ICO to penalise a company’s directors for their firm’s nuisance calls". Notice the phrase "ICO to penalise a company's directors".
The commentard stated "The law needs to change so they can't just dissolve when it suits them and also the directors should be personally made responsible for CCJs and fines." The commentard is asking that directors are made responsible for ALL fines and CCJs. Not just the ones from the ICO.
Forget all that, this is much simpler to resolve, from the article;
"Companies can only make automated marketing calls to people that have previously consented to such communications from them."
I can give you the complete list of people who want to receive such automated calls.
...
Now if no one wants these, then surely they are illegal? The above line merely gives them an inch and they taking a fecking light years worth of the piss.
Thats no good if the company can just wind up to avoid the fine.
There needs to be liability on company directors for all manner of criminal and civil behaviour made by comapnies. IIRC theres liability on Directors for a few things (H&S breaches I think). There should be liability on Directors for all kinds of company behaviour, particularly where its premeditated as in this case.
Decent list of Director personal liabilities here:
https://united-kingdom.taylorwessing.com/synapse/duties_personal_liabilities.html
We should just have a blanket statute that says that any outstanding company liabilities for breach of statutes transfer to the directors if the company is wound up. (Needs a better legal mind than mine to word that properly)
> Thats no good if the company can just wind up to avoid the fine.
They should pay the fine in advance.
Seriously. If you want to send bulk text messages or make automated phone calls you should pay a deposit before you can send them, which is returned to you in the unlikely event that the recipients actually did opt in to receive them.
"what if you send your messages using a GSM modem? "
All the companies have terms in the T&C against that and they all shut down bulk senders pretty quickly.
You'd need thousands of sims, not just hundreds - and that means you start being traceable.
Spammy outfits like M-Blox got chased through various telcos inside the UK, then to the Channel Islands and then off to India before resorting to using forged message centre data - which is obvious enough now that the telcos can filter it.
"Seriously. If you want to send bulk text messages or make automated phone calls you should pay a deposit before you can send them, which is returned to you in the unlikely event that the recipients actually did opt in to receive them."
Take it a step further. The recipient dials a code, say 147x where x is any digit not currently assigned, and their account is credited with £1 (or some larger fee), twice that if the number is TPS registered. The recipient's telco adds on a fee for the service and then puts the charge on the caller's bill - or, if the call arrived from another network, transfer-charges that network.
It would, of course, be up to the originating network to decide whether they require an advance payment - why dictate their credit control policies, just put them on the hook for letting their customers behave that way.
All the more reason to pursue the directors for liabilities, if tehy're stripped of any profits then they wouldn't be able to afford to start up again (that is if the law does it properly and strips them bare...).
Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen since if they pay any tax then they'll be protected by the inland revenue as a source of income.
(Anon since Idon't want my tax bill going up this year)
"All the more reason to pursue the directors for liabilities, if they're stripped of any profits then they wouldn't be able to afford to start up again"
There is provision somewhere in the law to bar them from being company directors, though I have no idea what specific offences can trigger this.
"If a firm goes out of business to try and duck an ICO fine then they’re no longer making troublesome nuisance calls."
That doesn't stop them being resurrected like a phoenix the next day under a new name. Probably after selling their used phone kit at a bargain price to the new company - directly or indirectly.
They each throw a twelve sided die and shout out a number from 1-4. The die would relate to the month and the number roughly transcribe to the week where a BOFH article appeared.
Their punishment would be to share the fate of whoever it was that foolishly tangled with our hero in that article.
Perhaps an eight yard skip carefully positioned under THE window would help with clearing away most of the mess.
"If a firm goes out of business to try and duck an ICO fine then they’re no longer making troublesome nuisance calls. But the new law will increase the tools we have to go after them and hold them fully accountable for the harassment, annoyance and disruption they’ve caused."
Said a Lip Service drone.
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