A listed Bradford-based lender has been fined by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for sending almost 1.5 million spam messages to promote its credit cards.
Vanquis Bank Ltd, which is part of the beleaguered Provident Group, sent 870,849 spam text messages and 620,000 spam emails to promote its credit cards.
Both the emails and texts broke the law because the recipients had not consented to being sent such messages and Vanquis Bank has now been fined £75,000 by the ICO.
Provident Personal Credit Ltd was fined earlier this year after it sent 999,057 unsolicited text messages promoting its Satsuma brand.
The business has also experienced difficulties after a new operating model was introduced in July 2017 causing performance to drop.
Vanquis Bank obtained the marketing lists used to send the messages from other organisations and relied on indirect consent rather than checking itself that the correct level of consent had been obtained.
ICO head of enforcement Steve Eckersley said: "There are rules in place to protect people from the irritation, and in some cases anxiety and distress, spam texts and emails cause.
"People need to be properly informed about what they are consenting to.
"Telling them their details could be passed to 'similar organisations' or 'selected third parties' cannot be relied upon as specific consent."
He added: "People were so exasperated by these messages that they complained to us. That sparked two ICO investigations and enabled us to take action and hold the firms behind this nuisance to account.
"These firms should have taken responsibility for ensuring they had obtained clear and specific consent for the sending of the messages. They didn't and that is unacceptable."
"I would encourage anyone troubled by a spam email or text to report it via the ICO's website."
Yorkshire Business
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