Company Fined By ICO For Making 500,000 Nuisance Calls

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is responsible for overseeing data protection breaches in the UK and its primary role is dealing with complaints and reviewing breaches. If the ICO feel a data protection breach has occurred they will advise the offender on how to remedy the breach and may impose a penalty, which should be in proportion with the breach.

Recent data breach by DialADeal Scotland Ltd

DialADeal Scotland Ltd were recently fined £150,000 by the ICO for making 500,000 nuisance calls over a period of seven months. The calls were marketing based, however, in relation to deals that were unavailable, and therefore deemed to be nuisance calls. DialADeal made a number of data protection breaches whilst making the calls, described by the ICO as serious breaches, which warranted a significant fine.

The first breach committed by DialADeal was that they were making calls to people who had not given their permission to receive the calls and had registered this with the Telephone Preference Service where DialADeal were obtaining the phone numbers. DialADeal was aware that the people they were calling had not provided their permission to be called but chose to ignore this. This in itself is illegal as companies should not contact people without their permission having been registered on the Telephone Preference Service.

DialADeal were also using false trading names and disguised the telephone numbers they were using to make the calls. This is again illegal and places people at risk as they are unable to make contact should they mistakenly sign up for one of the schemes. When combined with the above breach, the breaches in totality were serious enough in the eyes of the ICO to warrant a fine of £150,000.

As well as being issued a fine, the ICO ordered DialADeal to stop making the calls. This confirms that the ICO are serious about tackling this issue and are seeking to bring nuisance marketing calls to an end.