Outsource Strategies Ltd – €280,800 Fine (United Kingdom, 2024)

In 2022, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) received 74 complaints submitted by data subjects concerning unsolicited direct marketing calls from Outsource Strategies Ltd (the controller), a telemarketing company that telesales campaigns for its partners. Between 11 February 2021 to 22 March 2022, the controller used a public telecommunications service to make 8,503,026 direct marketing calls. Of these, 1,346,503 connected and were answered by data subjects who had registered their phone numbers on the UK’s ‘do not call’ register. None of them had notified the controller that they did not object to receiving such calls. The data subjects stated that the callers were aggressive and used high-pressure sales tactics to persuade them to sign up for products. On 10 May 2022, the ICO send an initial investigation letter to the controller concerning alleged violations of the [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2426/contents/made Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003] (PECR), the UK’s implementation of the European e-Privacy Directive. Regulation 21(1) of the PECR prohibits unsolicited direct marketing calls where the data subject has previously notified the caller that such calls shouldn’t be made or where the data subject has listed the number in the ICO’s ‘do not call’ register pursuant to Regulation 26 PECR. Article 21(3) and (4) PECR anticipate two exceptions, respectively, to the prohibition on direct marketing calls to people registered on the ‘do not call’ list. First, when the number has been listed on the no-call list for less than 28 days, and second, when a data subject has notified a caller that he does not, for the time being, object to calls being made on that line. The controller told the ICO that its direct marketing campaigns were organised by their data supplier. Accordingly, it argued that screening callers for registration on the ‘do not call’ list was the responsibility of the data supplier, not the controller as the d