The text spam you receive from casinos might be a thing of the past
Online casinos are well known for the massive amount of spam and promotional offers they send out to their customers in order to try and reel them back in. This spam advertising is no longer going to be tolerated in the United Kingdom, as over 400 companies have received their letter to stop spamming customers immediately. The Information Commissioner’s Office is the agency that is responsible for controlling business spam to customers sent through SMS text messaging services. The ICO is now reaching out to put a stop to it.
It would seem that both casinos and affiliates have been advertising to customers through spam text messages so much that enough people came forward to the ICO, which forced them to act and try to resolve the complaints. They have also cited that there were other forms of intelligence that gave them information on the depth of the issue. The issue here isn’t simply just sending a bunch of spam messages out to customers, but also using customer data that is meant to be protected under various privacy policies, only to be handed off to affiliates.
This action taken by the ICO also results from the new “code of practice” that the company plans on following, which details that customers must be informed of all ways that their personal information is going to be used before agreeing to anything. This is generally done through a privacy policy that companies will have on their website or platform. Investigators that worked on behalf of ICO stated that many gambling operators are not taking responsibility for the actions of affiliates that promote their companies, and are instead trying to send the blame down the chain or will cite ignorance of the law. Pushing the buck onto someone else or pretending to not understand the law is not an excuse to ignore customer privacy.
What inventive do companies have to follow the warnings sent out by the ICO? In the letters the ICO does make it clear that any offenders that continue to breach this policy will face a large fine, which may be as much as 500k. Gambling affiliates that have received a letter face the same type of punishment if they continue to harass potential customers with spam SMS messages.
For those that don’t take the warning seriously, the ICO has already reported one company that they have fined for £70,000 based on the fact that they have sent out over 2.2 illegal marketing promotion offers via text message to customers from a different market. That company has also received a notice to stop sending these types of text messages in the future so that ignorance cannot be cited as an excuse.
Steve Eckersley, who is the head of the ICO, mentioned that just because you rely on another company to market for you doesn’t mean that you don’t take full responsibility for that company’s actions should they violate the law.
