“Spanish clairvoyant hits 100×100 7 euros 20 minutes.” “New to the team, whoever consults her is surprised. If you want a real medium, call ***.” “High level of clairvoyance, I am a professional for more than 30 years, I use a letter and pendulum 22 min 9e.” “A natural psychic, I visualize everything without you telling me anything, I make consultations in person and I don’t have a phone number of 806, only my landline *** 22 min x 9e.”
The list continues until there are 242 SMS of the same nature sent to the same telephone number in a period of only three months, between August and November 2021. The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) has fined a company 30,010 euros. company that offers clairvoyance and tarot services for this mass mailing of advertising without offering recipients a simple and free method to unsubscribe from this distribution.
The case originated from a claim filed by a person who received those hundreds of SMS messages, from Monday to Sunday and sometimes up to three times a day. Several dozen of them appear reflected in the privacy regulator’s resolution, published this week.
The messages were accompanied by robotic phone calls, the affected person has reported. “On calls, as soon as we answer the phone, a recorded voiceover offers us clairvoyance services; in SMS the same, identifying a landline and/or mobile number that we must call if we are interested in said services,” the resolution states.
The clairvoyance company, Rianlu Europa, based in Alcorcón (Madrid), has alleged that the sending of the messages was justified because the claimant had previously made calls to the company to request its services. Its managers justify that their clients “automatically” activated the sending of advertising by SMS when calling the switchboard. Furthermore, they recognize that the shipping period was even longer than what the claimant denounces, since it occurred from April 2021 to May 2022.
According to the company’s version, the high number of advertising messages is due to the fact that it received up to 49 calls from its mobile phone. “If the claimant continued receiving SMS it was solely and exclusively motivated by the new and repeated calls that were made from said number, as we have been explaining, either by her or by people in her environment with access to said number and who produced, in a manner “automatic, the activation of the commercial action and the reason to continue receiving the SMS,” he argues.
Although the affected party alleges that several of these calls were made to request the cessation of sending advertising SMS, Rianlu denies this and states that “these calls were never to request cancellation, they were to speak with our tarot readers or psychics.” It also indicates that the first contact was made by the claimant in January 2021, before the first advertising messages were sent.
The AEPD does not go into the substance of this issue nor does it supervise the veracity of the call list provided by the clairvoyance company. On the contrary, it states that whether these occurred or not, the sanctioning process focused on the sending of advertising SMS without the option to unsubscribe from receiving them, not on whether or not the claimant uses the company’s clairvoyance services. Furthermore, remember that the law requires establishing this mechanism for cessation of commercial communications in all cases.
“The constant receipt of SMS messages advertising clairvoyance and tarot services without offering a simple and free procedure both at the time of data collection and in each of the commercial communications, has not only caused inconvenience to the complainant (remember that they were received practically daily, also on weekends and on many occasions three SMS per day), but it has also placed her in a position of defenselessness, since she did not know the identity of the company responsible for sending the advertising through SMS messages and, consequently, could not request the cancellation of said advertising service,” says the Agency.
Although the company has claimed that it included this possibility of deregistering following the start of the procedure, the AEPD has not considered it sufficient mitigating factor to avoid the sanction. The 30,010 euros fine corresponds to the lowest range of the sanctions stipulated as “serious” in the Information Society Services Law for sending unsolicited commercial communications (30,001 euros to 150,000, with infractions “very serious” in the range of 150,001 to 600,000 euros).
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