Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The UK's data watchdog has confirmed it failed to collect up to £7m worth of fines dished out in the past four years.
Since 2015, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued 152 penalties totalling £16.6m, of which 47 remain unpaid, according to Freedom of Information responses issued to SMS API company The SMS Works.
The claims management industry was the worst, receiving a total of £3.2m in fines since 2015 mainly due to nuisance calls. However, just £490,000 has so far been collected.
The largest outstanding amount is an unpaid £400,000 fine to Keurboom Communications, a company behind 99.5 million nuisance calls in 2017.
Financial punishment for data breaches have had the greatest success rate, with 85 per cent accounted for.
[...] "Some nuisance call directors liquidate their firms to avoid paying fines from the ICO. In December 2018, the law changed to make directors themselves responsible for nuisance marketing. This should have a real deterrent effect on those who deliberately set out to disrupt people with troublesome calls, texts and emails."
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday November 29 2019, @10:27AM (1 child)
If they won't pay the fine, or they liquidate the company, jail the directors.
The law won't allow it? Change the law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @01:47PM
It _was_ changed, in December 2018. Almost certainly as a response to such liquidations, if not at least partly.
However, and IANAL so take with a pinch of salt and verify and correct if necessary, but changes to law which criminalises or makes something illegal, or otherwise restricts what is permissible or has other negative effect upon whom it applies to from their perspective, don't apply retrospectively to deeds done before the law came into effect. Otherwise we might be doing or have done something perfectly acceptable today, and suddenly the law changes and we're responsible for something which we had no chance of knowing was or was going to become wrong. Allowing retrospective application to such changes also opens the door to abuse, allowing government to easily get rid of someone based on things they did in the past which were acceptable at the time.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Friday November 29 2019, @04:46PM
...they fixed the cable?
hey, you asked for it, with that headline.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."