A COMPANY accused of spamming has received a rap on the knuckles. The unnamed local firm was issued with a preliminary enforcement notice by the data protection commissioner after a member of the public complained that he had been receiving lots of marketing emails.

‘Firstly, this person did not have any business relationship with the company,’ said commissioner Peter Harris.

‘Then, when the company was sending him emails, they did not give him any way of opting out of receiving them.

‘I took the complaint reasonably seriously and told the company to sort itself out, which it did very promptly to prevent any further action being necessary.’

In cases such as this, Mr Harris said that if the company had not acted so promptly to correct the error, he would have issued a formal notice and released the company’s name to the public.

‘The formal notice would provide some embarrassment for the company and, if they still didn’t sort out the problem, they would be prosecuted, which would probably result in a large fine.’

He added that he received quite a few complaints such as this and stressed that companies sending out marketing information by email should always offer people the chance to stop receiving them.

‘One thing people need to be aware of is to make sure that they give all their email addresses to companies when requesting a stop to emails. Often, people give only one address and then the company just sends emails to other email addresses for that customer.’

* Guidance on the regulations on marketing is available for download from the commissioner’s website, www.gov.gg/

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