August was another quiet month in terms of the data protection and privacy enforcement action published by the Information Commissioner’s Office. There were just two Monetary Penalty Notices published by the ICO last month. There are still a few key points to draw from last month’s published enforcement action – some of which are featured fairly regularly on these monthly blogposts, but are worthy of repitition.
Key Points
- When carrying out direct marketing by telephone it is important that you check the intended list against the list held by the Telephone Preference Service before undertaking the campaign. If any number you intend on calling appears on that list you must satisfy yourself that you have sufficient evidence to support that you can still call that number, despite it being on the TPS.
- If you’re getting your telephone lists from a third party then you must still do your own due diligence. Ensure that you have received sufficient evidence from the seller that the persons on the list have, in fact, indicated that they don’t mind being marketed to.
- When drafting a privacy notice which sets out that you may share personal data with third parties it is important to be as accurate and precise as possible. It is not enough to include something along the lines of that you will share personal data with “carefully selected partners” and if you have a detailed list of organisations (or categories of organisations) that you may share personal data with, it is important that you do not share personal data with third parties who do not fall within that list.
Enforcement action published by the ICO in August 2018
AMS Marketing Limited
AMS Marketing Limited was served with a Monetary Penalty Notice in the amount of £100,000 [pdf] after if breached Regulation 21 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. AMS Marketing had made in excess of 75,000 calls to numbers which were listed with the Telephone Preference Service and were unable to demonstrate to the Commissioner that they had been notified by the subscriber that they did not object, for the time being, to receiving calls for the purpose of direct marketing.
Lifecycle Marketing (Mother and Baby) Ltd
Life Style Marketing (Mother and Baby) Ltd (also known as ‘Emma’s Diary’) was served with a Monetary Penalty Notice in the amount of £140,000 after it failed to comply with the first data protection principle in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998 (“DPA1998”). The company sold the personal data of more than 1 million individuals to the Labour Party for use in its campaign during the General election that took place in 2017 without telling those individuals that this is something that it might do with their personal data. The company, the Commissioner found, had no lawful basis within Schedule 2 of the DPA1998 for processing the personal data of those individuals.
If you require advice and assistance in connection with any of the data protection/privacy issues above, or any other Information Law matter, please do contact Alistair Sloan on 0141 229 0880 or by sending him an E-mail directly. You can also follow our dedicated information law twitter account.