Security News > 2020 > October > Email-spamming COVID profiteers deleted database with 'key evidence' when UK watchdog came knocking

"The ICO investigation found that the company was not involved in the business of supplying PPE, but that the director had decided to buy face masks to sell on at a profit," the data regulator said in a statement.

The firm is also said to have "Deleted a database of key evidence which would have shown the full extent of the volume of emails they had sent" after ICO investigators contacted the company.

Y Curry, the ICO's head of investigations, said in a canned quote: "We pursued this case because the company broke the law and invaded people's privacy. We will take action where we find systematic flouting of the law and evidence of companies trying to make money from people via nuisance marketing."

Separately, the data watchdog has opened a public consultation into its own future, urging the public to express its views on how it exercises "Its data protection regulatory functions of information notices, assessment notices, enforcement notices and penalty notices."

The consultation relates to the statutory guidance that regulates what the ICO does and how it does it, particularly in the issuing of fines and taking of regulatory action against companies said to have broken the UK Data Protection Act 2018.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/10/09/covid_spam_profiteer_fined_40k_ico/