A financial company has been fined by the communications regulator for breaking anti-spam laws more than three million times.
Latitude Finance Australia was forced to pay a $ 1.55 million fine to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) for misdescribing business emails and text messages to customers.
The authority found that Latitude sent messages marked “informational only” and promoted products such as credit cards without giving customers the option to unsubscribe from messages.
Latitude’s investigation found that the company sent more than three million emails and text messages without giving customers the option to unsubscribe, even sending messages to those who had already tried to unsubscribe. .
Authority president Nerida O’Loughlin said companies need to correctly characterize messages sent to customers and respect receiving choices.
“Companies cannot promote their products and services to customers under the pretext of simply providing them with factual information,” he said.
“Customers must be able to withdraw their consent and stop receiving commercial messages”.
Under anti-spam laws, companies have five days to remove customers from mailing lists if they have given up.
Ms. O’Loughlin said Latitude did not change its practices even after the company was notified of the violations.
“These rules have been in place since 2003, so there’s no excuse for Latitude – or any other company – for not having compliant practices,” he said.
“We will actively monitor Latitude’s compliance and commitments made to ACMA.”
Latitude was required to appoint an independent consultant to verify compliance with anti-spam laws, with the company also required to train staff and report to the authority.
In the past 18 months alone, the authority has received a $ 5 million fine for violating spam laws.