back to article Welsh firm fined £60k for pummelling phones with 270k pay-day loan texts

A Welsh firm has been handed a £60,000 fine for spamming more than 270,000 pay-day loan texts around Christmas 2016. The UK's data protection watchdog doled out the penalty to STS Commercial Limited – which is registered as an IT service provider – after finding that the biz didn't have consent to send the messages, which …

  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

    Has anybody got their telephone number? I thought it could be fun if we all sent them a txt message "Need to pay a fine from the ICO? You've been APPROVED. Borrow £48,000 TODAY for £481/week"

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      They will only consider it as a consent to send you messages. It also gives them a free confirmed phone number to add to their list.

      This is one of the major issues with present ICO enforcement. They WILL NOT DO ANYTHING unless you have tried to remove yourself from the spammer's list. I do not think that the depth of cluelessness in this "guidance" even needs explaining on this forum.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        "This is one of the major issues with present ICO enforcement. They WILL NOT DO ANYTHING unless you have tried to remove yourself from the spammer's list. "

        Not any more. That changed on May 25th

    2. TheVogon

      "If it pays by 7 August, it can pay a reduced rate of £48,000."

      And if it goes into administration it can benefit from a 100% discount.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think you'll find that's "Borrow £48,000 TODAY for £4,810/week"...

  3. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    No deterrent.

    Surely a £60k or similar fine will just be on a contractual risk profile somewhere and factored in as part of their cost of doing business?

    When are the ICO actually going to start being useful deterrent and going after the directors personally?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No deterrent.

      start being useful deterrent and going after the directors personally

      They will not. Every single time I have filed something with casework@ it has gone nowhere. They will not pursue even clear cut cases which violated the previous DPA across the board. As far as GDPR enforcement - you gotta be kidding, right?

      It takes a scandal at the level of the one the media created with Cambridge Analytica for them to pretend to do something. Even then, it is mostly pretend and a gentle tap on the wrist.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: No deterrent.

        "It takes a scandal at the level of the one the media created with Cambridge Analytica for them to pretend to do something. "

        In the case of CA, they did everything they possibly could to _avoid_ doing something and it was only when the BBC made it impossible to ignore that they took action.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No deterrent.

      Surely a £60k or similar fine will just be on a contractual risk profile somewhere and factored in as part of their cost of doing business?

      No. You're thinking of big corporates (like the entire financial services sector) where fines are seen as a cost of doing business. The auto-dialler and automated text senders are bottom feeding scum - in their business model the company operates as limited liability company precisely to limit the owners liability, and invariably has diddly squat assets or capital. If a fine comes in, shut the relevant legal entity down, move the operations to a new off the shelf company.

      Would you pay a corporate penalty of £50k if could avoid it in an apparently legal way? And if that seems wrong, its no different to the wholesale tax avoidance by large US companies, whether that's reselling tat, software and tech, or even operating coffee shops in the UK..

    3. TheVogon

      Re: No deterrent.

      "When are the ICO actually going to start being useful deterrent and going after the directors personally?"

      They do go after the ones that fold the company before paying via the insolvancy service to try to get them barred as directors.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Bavaria Blu
      Go

      Small change surely - I doubt they have to pay more than a ha’penny per text, so we're talking £1350?

  5. Wolfclaw

    Soon to be wound up and directors disappear around the corner to open up a new dodgy company and no cash paid !

  6. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Consent

    the firm and its directors had been "repeatedly reminded" of their obligations under PECR, sent direct marketing guidance

    I wonder whether they had given consent to receive that guidance?

  7. WolfFan Silver badge

    Hmm

    So, I wonder if any of the directors of this lovely firm might be flying over to the other side of the Atlantic in the near future? Perhaps someone could place a call with ICE and see if they can be detained in one of the kiddie camps, such as the one in El Paso, Texas. Or perhaps sent over for a nice Caribbean vacation on the south coast of Cuba.

    Meanwhile, we have a few similar individuals here who might profit by a stay at a scenic British location, such as, hmm, Woodhill. Though perhaps being parked in Milton Keynes might count as cruel and unusual punishment. Even Texas, even El Paso, is better than Milton Keynes.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmm

      As a person who grew up in MK during it's growth from a collecti0on of small towns being linked into a large city... I confess that I tire of the jibes from people who know nothing about the place.

      Is it perfect... no... does it have a lot to offer... yes.

      It might have a daft name, being named after a small village within it's boundaries (Trust me, there are worse that could have been chosen). But it's got a large technology employment base and sits halfway between Oxford and Cambridge as well as half way between London and Birmingham... and as all of you should know... it's the home of Bletchley Park... That daft place where modern computing was born.

      I grew up literally a few hundred yards from the place where the 'infamous' concrete cows were created... and I actually helped work on them as a little kid... along with a few other kids down my street. We also helped build a concrete snowman that's still displayed within the grounds of what's now called 'Milton Keynes Museum'... But used to be called the 'Stacey Hill Museum of Industry and rural life'.

      It's home to the first major railway works, and I did my engineering apprenticeship there along with a few years at college. It was where the royal train was kept and worked on when not in use.. now half of the original site has gone and was replaced with a Tesco and housing, and now a Lidl has sprung up next door to it too. But there's still a railway presence there. But that's no different than any other industrial town.

      There are so many good things about MK that most people don't realise and simply blather on ignorantly based on bullshit and prejudices.

      It's really no different than any other city I've been too... it's got it's good sides and it's shitty sides. It's a little expensive to live there (hence why I bought a house outside of it in a smaller town for half the price, that's now worth 3/4 of MK values as it expands). But I'm in MK every 10-14 days to visit friends & family for a few days.

      You can pass through it and not know you're in a city, the often mocked grid road system makes for swift

      travel anywhere within minutes... It doesn't have great public transport and the parking in the city centre is pricey (unless you don't have to pay like me), unless you park further away and there's no park and ride.

      Rant over... tl:dr it's not a bad place, there are better... but there are a lot more that are worse.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hmm

        Top post, AC!

        And I concur with every word. MK is very middling, dull, unmemorable.....and that makes for a great place to live. Limited noise, crime, little grime, little congestion, a very pleasant low rise landscape, and good facilities. I say let the urban hipsters fight it out with moped riding ratboys in the overpriced, overcrowded filth of The Smoke, they're welcome to it.

        I live in another one of the 1960s new towns, invariably sneered at by people in the region, but its brilliant - easy to get round, well planned, tree planting that puts New England to shame in "the fall", even the downmarket areas are spacious and lacking in urban squalor. Very very rarely does my town appear in the national press, shopping is easy, property prices modest. And its on the edge of one of the most beautiful parts of the country.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Hmm

          "I live in another one of the 1960s new towns, invariably sneered at by people in the region, but its brilliant - easy to get round, well planned, tree planting that puts New England to shame in "the fall", even the downmarket areas are spacious and lacking in urban squalor. Very very rarely does my town appear in the national press, shopping is easy, property prices modest. And its on the edge of one of the most beautiful parts of the country."

          I was thinking Washington, but as a read further I realised it couldn't possibly be that place.

      2. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Hmm

        Theres always a big plus for MK in my book... at least its not Swindon

        Boris

        <<<< has been dead and that was more fun that Swindon

      3. eionmac

        Re: Hmm _a Good Post on MK

        I drove through the five wee 'towns' often, as MK was being made, as I had business with folk/firms there. It was at one state, like all building sites unlovely, but maturity of a town to live in takes a half century of so so new generations (locals) grow up over the incomers (their parents). A Canadian city I lived in was about 200,000 folk when I went there its now over 1 million, a very different place. Good Luck to all folk in Milton Keynes.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Hmm _a Good Post on MK

          I can't bring myself to have any respect for a town that steals someone else's football team instead of starting up their own.

  8. Camilla Smythe

    Psst Save yourselves £47,998

    https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/register-your-company

    £12 on line.

    Don't bother filing more stuff for the previous one. Just wait until Companies House gets around to losing it via a hard floppy disk failure.

  9. Mark 85

    spamming more than 270,000 pay-day loan texts around Christmas 2016.

    Part of the problem with these scum is that it takes so long for action to be taken against them.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm so boring

    I never get these spam texts.

  11. sanmigueelbeer
    Facepalm

    1. £60,000 fine is not really something the offender can take seriously. Even more so if the business is/was good. "£60,000???? That's all? Here. Here's £660,000. £60,000 for the fine and 'down payment' £600,000 for another ten offenses. Now sod off (and let me get back to my business)!" £60,000 sounds like protection money.

    2. How much fine was imposed or issued is of no importance. How much fine was collected is a whole different meaning to the phrase "toothless tiger".

    3. Seriously, set up a call spam in the UK? Are they daft or what? I'd set up shop far east of Europe. Make sure I have a good internet connection and just get cracking! When the fine comes in? Close shop and move somewhere else.

    1. Mark 85

      3. Seriously, set up a call spam in the UK? Are they daft or what? I'd set up shop far east of Europe. Make sure I have a good internet connection and just get cracking! When the fine comes in? Close shop and move somewhere else.

      Why move? Just change the name on the front door.

  12. the Jim bloke

    Does the UK have any sort of "proceeds of crime" laws

    Where the police get to confiscate stuff they think you shouldnt have, used in Australia against drug dealers etc, and in the USA against tourists, out of towners, and anyone the local cops think cant object.

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