Text Messaging Featured Article

Text messaging can be an outstanding marketing tool … unless it violates consumer protection regulations. One payday loan company in the United Kingdom recently learned this the hard way, and is now facing fines of up to £175,000, or approximately $287,956, from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the U.K.’s regulatory office that handles data and privacy protection. 

Similar to the United States’ recently updated Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which requires that companies confirm customer consent prior to sending promotional text messages or making phone calls, the U.K.’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations state that it is illegal to send marketing messages without a recipient’s consent. These regulations are enforced by the ICO.

We’ve all experienced the annoyance of spam emails from senders claiming to be friends of ours, or friends of friends, and it’s amazing that anyone still falls for this very old trick anymore. But as it turns out, the company now being pursued by the ICO had attempted this very ploy, sending unsolicited and misleading text messages to recipients, claiming to be friends of theirs.

To make matters even more shady, the texts were sent using unregistered SIM cards. As this is a common method that spammers use to avoid detection, this wasn’t the most subtle move—especially given that all of these text messages, despite the mystery source, all pointed recipients to the same website, which belongs to First Financial. Interesting. Below is an example of one such SMS:

"Hi Mate hows u? I'm still out in town, just got £850 in my account from these guys www.firstpaydayloanuk.co.uk."

The Advertising Standards Authority took action against the company last June, after receiving thousands of complaints regarding the company’s text messaging campaign (4,031 complaints have been filed to date, according to the ICO).

"People are fed up with this menace," said Simon Entwistle, director of operations for the ICO. "We will continue to target these companies that continue to blight the daily lives of people across the U.K."

In addition to the £175,000 fine, First Financial’s former director, Hamed Shabani, is being issued a separate £1,180.66 penalty for having failed to notify the ICO of how the company processed personal data—in other words, for concealing its illegal tactics.