We welcome the ruling from the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) on an appeal from Join the Triboo Limited.
The online recruitment firm appealed a fine of £130,000 and an enforcement notice issued by the ICO in April 2023 for sending 107 million spam emails to over 400,000 people without their consent between August 2019 and August 2020.
In a judgment handed down last week, the Tribunal dismissed the appeal against the fine and upheld the penalty amount of £130,000. The Tribunal found that Join the Triboo’s privacy policy was “poorly signposted”, and that registration alone could not be treated as consent to direct marketing.
Join the Triboo must now provide current consent statements and privacy policies for the Tribunal to consider before it makes its decision on whether the enforcement notice should be upheld.
Andy Curry, ICO Head of Investigations, said:
“We are pleased the Tribunal has agreed that Join the Triboo did not properly seek permission from the people it chose to bombard with spam emails. This judgment acknowledges the intrusive nature of unsolicited direct marketing, which can be a huge invasion of privacy.
“All organisations sending direct marketing messages are responsible for ensuring they have valid consent to contact every recipient. By defending our decisions through the appeals process and accepting the valuable scrutiny of the Tribunal, we continue to protect the public from predatory marketing and remind organisations breaking the law that we will pursue every case to the fullest extent.”
The ruling follows a hearing that took place in March 2024.
We issued a Monetary Penalty Notice and Enforcement Notice to Join the Triboo Limited in April 2023.
We enforce the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR), which cover the rules for organisations wishing to make direct marketing calls, texts or emails.
Read more about our work to protect the public from nuisance marketing, and what to do if you receive spam emails you did not consent to.