ICO Fines Vanquis Bank for Sending Unsolicited Promotional Messages
Provident Financial Group's subsidiary Vanquis Bank Limited attempted at making its payment cards, in particular, credit cards popular through unlawful means. The bank dispatched 620,000 spam mails and 870,849 bulk text messages canvassing its credit cards although the recipients didn't agree to let the promotional messages be sent to them. The act being an offence ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) fined the Bradford situated bank 75,000 pounds.
According to ICO, Vanquis acquired the lists of names to which it was preparing for dispatching the marketing messages from a variety of organizations. As for recipients' consent, the bank acquired it indirectly instead of verifying if the exact consent was there. In the consent there was general wording that weren't specific such as "carefully selected third parties" and "trusted parties."
Information Commissioner's Office has as well notified Vanquis legally for making sure the bank functioned in compliance with law. One Provident spokesman stated that Vanquis Bank was apologetic if the latest developments caused people annoyance.
ICO chief-of-enforcement Steve Eckersley stated that rules were there for safeguarding people from distress and concern that spam mails and texts lead to. It's important that people are adequately informed before they give their consent to any promotional message. A direct consent shouldn't contain words such as "selected third parties" or "similar organizations." Thisismoney.co.uk posted this, October 10, 2017.
Meanwhile another blow following Vanquis Bank's fine is to the company which no longer retained position on the FTSE 100 in September following a very big single-day sell-off by organizations doing blue-chip business.
An investigation is ongoing by Financial Conduct Authority into the way Vanquis thrashed one Repayment Option Plan utility. A batch of twin investigations by ICO had made possible to take action while hold the companies responsible for the nuisance, accountable. A computation by analysts show that the result following the scandal was likely to get Provident fined 300m pounds including compensatory payments.
Vanquis after re-examining its marketing procedure has made sure the said kinds of contraventions don't re-occur. It wouldn't work with the related 3rd-parties too. People are welcome to notify ICO any concern they have by visiting www.ico.org.uk/concerns/ or dialing 0303-123-1113.
ยป SPAMfighter News - 10/17/2017
