ICO issues £150,000 fines for spam texts

Reports of spam texts offering financial and debt services resulted in the senders being fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Sending spam text messages is illegal if you haven’t previously given the sending company permission to do so. Companies can send you text messages if you are a customer, as long as you can opt out of receiving these messages.

The ICO fined two Manchester-based financial and debt management companies – Quick Tax Claims Limited and National Debt Advice Limited – for breaching this law.

Read on to find out more about the ICO's investigation and what to do about spam texts.

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7.5 million texts

The ICO became aware of Quick Tax Claims Limited (a PPI tax-refunds company) and National Debt Advice Limited (a debt-counselling advice service) in May 2023, after complaints were sent to the 7726 text-message reporting service.

Quick Tax Claims Limited has been fined £120,000. The ICO found that Quick Tax Claims Limited had sent 7,863,547 texts within a month, with 66,793 complaints. Quick Tax Claims Limited had purchased people’s personal information from third-party suppliers and did not obtain valid consent. 

National Debt Advice Limited sent 129,902 spam text messages, with 4,033 complaints. The ICO found that they also purchased personal information from third-party suppliers, including loan-decline data. This allowed them to send texts to people who had previously been turned down for loans.

National Debt Advice Limited also didn’t conduct the necessary consent checks and received a fine of £30,000 from the ICO.

Andy Curry of the ICO said: 'Both of these companies bombarded people with spam messages, often preying on those who might be experiencing difficult financial circumstances. To then be hounded by numerous unwarranted text messages just adds further stress to people in those situations. 

'It is so important, in these types of circumstances, that companies gain consent to send direct messages. Relying on third-party claims of consent, without undertaking the most basic of checks, is far from responsible conduct by these companies, and that’s why we took action.'

What to do about spam texts

How you should deal with unsolicited texts or emails depends on whether the message is spam from a genuine company or a potential scam message.

• You can report spam texts by forwarding the message to 7726, a free reporting service provided by phone operators.
• Spam texts can also be reported to the ICO on its website.
• If you receive spam, text ‘STOP’ if you know the company and then delete the text.  If you don’t know the company, or suspect it is a scam, don't respond as this could indicate to a scammer that your number is active and will encourage them to continue to target you.
• If you think it may be a scam, don’t respond to it and do not click on any links. Block the sender in your phone settings.