The information commissioners office has fined a Liverpool based debt advisory firm who made automated marketing calls promoting PPI compensation claims between October 2015 and July 2016, without any of the recipients’ consent.
While the watchdog fined Holmes Financial Solutions for 8.7 million calls, it said the company made more than 26.6 million automated calls.
Unsolicited marketing calls could earn much higher fines under GDPR, the EU’s incoming data protection law that applies in the UK from 25 May 2018. Under these rules, firms face fines of up to 4% of their annual turnover, or €20 million (whichever is higher) for misusing people’s data.
Hopefully the GDPR regulations will curb these types of approaches by companies, but many are using overseas routing / call centres to avoid detection so they will not stop all together.
