The Register (protected by Cloudflare; archived copy) reports:
A UK firm found responsible for orchestrating 99.5 million nuisance calls has been fined a record £400,000 (US$517,550) by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
[...] The calls, made over an 18-month period, punted services related to road traffic accident claims and PPI compensation. Some people received repeat calls, sometimes during unsociable hours. Keurboom routinely hid its identity [...]
The BBC's coverage notes:
Keurboom director Greg Rudd told the Mirror newspaper that he found cold-calling "annoying" but said it was "part of life".
"I don't enjoy receiving them but that doesn't make them illegal," he said.
However the ICO said making automatic marketing calls without people's consent was illegal.
[...] In October, the government announced plans to let the ICO fine company directors as well as their businesses.
"Making directors responsible will stop them avoiding fines by putting their company into liquidation," the ICO said.
According to the stories, the company "has been placed in liquidation."
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Friday May 12 2017, @07:15AM (1 child)
A few days ago at work I heard a weird noise coming from a copy/fax machine; at first I thought it was a severe weather alert because it had tones interspersed with speech. It turned out to be a political survey robot calling a fax machine. The survey just kept repeating its opener while the fax machine tried to get an ACK. Fun stuff.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Monday May 15 2017, @01:43PM
There are still a couple of fax machines dotted around my workplace, a large NHS hospital (and yes, I've argued until I'm blue in the face that the damn things need to go). Despite all correspondence clearly listing both phone and fax numbers on separate lines with identifiers in bold text, and despite the fax number being on a second/different line, we still get people calling the fax line. It's true that there are none so blind as those that won't see!