Security News > 2024 > January > Home improvement marketers dial up trouble from regulator

Another week and yet another couple of pesky cold callers face fines from the UK's data privacy watchdog for "Bombarding" unsuspecting households with marketing messages about home improvements.

Poxell, which specializes in energy saving products including double glazing and resin driveways, is being penalized to the tune of £150,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office for making 2.6 million marketing calls between March and July 2022, resulting in 413 complaints to the data regulator.

The ICO claims the company had bought several telephone lines "In a bid to avoid detection," didn't engage with the investigation, and kept on making unlawful marketing calls until their "Account was finally terminated by their communications service provider."

Skean Homes is nursing a fine of £100,000 for making more than 600,000 unsolicited marketing calls between March and May 2022, again to people that were signed up to the TPS. The company didn't take responsibility for the calls and told the ICO they had "Allowed their lead generation provider to temporarily use their caller identities and that TPS checks failed due to a technical error." The ICO said it found no evidence that a third party was using CLIs when those phone numbers were dialed.

"These fines should send a clear message that companies cannot use third parties or multiple phone numbers to avoid detection and taking responsibility for illegal calls. We will take decisive action to ensure the public are protected from nuisance marketing."

Clearly these fines don't send a message to cold callers and El Reg expects to cover more instances in the not too distant future.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/01/17/ico_cold_call_fines/