Wind Hellas – €20,000 Fine (Greece, 2019)

The HDPA examined six complaints against Wind Hellas (hereafter "Wind") and ΠΛΕΓΜΑ ΝΕΤ for unsolicited calls with human intervention for direct marketing purposes. Wind claimed, among others, that it should not be the only liable company but it should first be assessed, as a preliminary issue, which the role of the contracting companies operating as call centres is (either data controllers or data processors). It claimed that some of them are data processors, because Wind provides them with lists with telephone numbers and with explicit orders for specific advertising activities; some others are data controllers, since they process lists with numbers they compile themselves, without Wind being aware of them. Wind also claimed that the purpose of the calls is research and not advertising. 1) Does a telephone number constitute personal data? 2) Who is the data controller? 3) Do the processing activities pursue (even partially) advertising purposes? 4) Is the data subjects’ consent valid? The HDPA found that: 1) The telephone number constitutes personal data according to Article 4(1) GDPR as the owner can be indirectly identified. 2) In both cases above, Wind is the data controller as it exclusively determines the purpose of the processing while the contracting companies are data processors. 3) The processing activities are intended to pursue (at least partially) advertising purposes. 4) The data subjects’ consent is not valid. In addition to those issues, the HDPA admitted all the complaints and found that Wind Hellas had violated Article 14 GDPR and the national law on the protection of personal data and privacy in the telecommunication sector, while the processor ΠΛΕΓΜΑ ΝΕΤ had violated Article 32 GDPR.