Security News > 2021 > January > Four cold calling marketing firms fined almost £500k by ICO

The UK's data watchdog has issued £480,000 in financial penalties to four businesses that illegally made 2.4 million marketing calls to members of the public registered with the Telephone Preference Services.

In the case of Chameleon Marketing, it made 617,323 direct marketing calls to people registered with TPS between 17 March and 2 July 2019.

The ICO said the company did not conduct due diligence on the supplier of its data and was penalised £100,000.

Its actions led to 94 complaints to the TPS and it was fined £110,000 by the ICO. Over a six-month period from 2 January to 11 June 2019, Repair & Assure Ltd made more than 1.1 million calls to people about washing machine warranties, leading to 88 complaints to the ICO and TPS. At first, the business said the data it obtained was from 12 third-party suppliers, said the ICO, but the watchdog discovered that data had been gathered from telephone marketing surveys.

Solar Style Solutions made almost 189,000 calls between 1 January and 29 April 2019, of which around 126,000 were to TPS registered users.

The ICO said the company was naive, relying only on "Good faith" with regard to the source of its purchased data.

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