HelloFresh has been fined £140,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for a campaign of 80 million spam messages that were sent over a seven-month period.
An investigation by the ICO found that 79 million emails and 1 million texts sent by the food delivery company “lacked proper consent” as customers were not aware they had opted in to receive the marketing messages.
It found that the text messages were sent based on an opt-in statement that did not make any reference to the sending of marketing via text.
Meanwhile, despite there being a reference to receiving emails, the option to opt-in was included in an age confirmation statement which was likely to “unfairly incentivise customers to agree”.
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The regulatory body discovered that customers were not given sufficient information that their data would continue to be used for marketing purposes for up to 24 months after cancelling their subscriptions.
It added that HelloFresh had continued to contact some individuals even after they had requested to stop receiving the messages.
ICO head of investigations Andy Curry said: “This marked a clear breach of trust of the public by HelloFresh.
“Customers weren’t told exactly what they’d be opting into, nor was it clear how to opt out.
“From there, they were hit with a barrage of marketing texts they didn’t want or expect, and in some cases, even when they told HelloFresh to stop, the deluge continued.”
The ICO launched its investigation last March after receiving almost 9,000 complaints through its website and 7726 spam reporting messaging service.
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