The Information Commissioner’s Office is continuing its seemingly endless war on the scourge of nuisance calls by battering a Birmingham-based business with a £100,000 fine for a bombardment of unsolicited calls to people registered on the Telephone Preference Service.
TMAC, which sells personal pendant alarms and security systems, made over 260,000 predatory calls between February and September 2024 to people who may need extra support to protect themselves, including the elderly.
Call transcripts showed that TMAC employees did not reveal their true identity, claiming to be calling on behalf of a variety of different local crime and fire prevention initiatives in an attempt to dupe recipients.
The transcripts also appear to show that callers were actively targeting people aged over 60 years old as part of the unlawful activity.
Furthermore, one of TMAC’s bosses admitted that the telephone numbers had been taken from second-hand data that had been acquired at a company he had previously worked for.
These offences have been deemed a serious breach of the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations.
Under the new Data (Use & Access) Act 2025, PECR fines in the UK have increased from a maximum of £500,000 to £17.5m or 4% of total worldwide annual turnover, to align with UK GDPR. Whether that will be enough to discourage the rogues, however, remains to be seen.
ICO head of investigations Andy Curry said: “When people register with the TPS it is because they want to protect themselves from unwanted marketing calls. TMAC’s actions showed a brazen disregard for privacy laws – making thousands of intrusive calls each month and failing to identify themselves to the recipients.
“We are grateful to those who reported these calls to us. Public reporting plays a crucial role in our work, and where we see organisations causing harm through unlawful and predatory direct marketing, we will not hesitate to act.”
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