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ICO fines PPI claims firm £80,000 over 1.3m spam SMS deluge

More fines, totalling £250,000, to be doled out this week

The Information Commissioner's Office has served up penalty of £80,000 to a PPI claims company that sent more than 1.3 million spam texts.

Brum-based UKMS Money Solutions Limited (UKMS) had bought numbers in bulk from list brokers which it subsequently spammed to encourage people to make compensation claims for mis-sold payment protection insurance.

The ICO was livid, however, that the firm simply assumed people had agreed to receive marketing SMSes, despite the legal requirement to check if this had been the case.

Andy Curry, the manager for enforcement at the ICO, said it was "simply not good enough" that UKMS "relied on its data suppliers' word that the people on the lists had agreed to be contacted".

"UKMS should have known that the responsibility to ensure they had the right consent to send messages to people rests with them," he added.

A total of 1,442 people complained to the ICO and the 7726 spam text reporting service during UKMS' nine-week direct marketing campaign between April and June 2015.

This is merely the first of three fines to be doled out this week by the ICO, which will seek to collect £250,000 from companies responsible for nuisance calls and texts.

The ICO stated this "will bring the total number of fines issued over the last four months around nuisance marketing to £1 million."

The Register has contacted UKMS regarding the firm's response to the fine. We have not received a response as of publication. ®

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