ICO updates direct marketing guidance with greater focus on non-profits
Melanie May | 5 April 2016 | News
The Information Commissioner’s Office has published an updated version of its guidance for direct marketing under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
It serves as a guide to how organisations can make sure that marketing calls and texts are made in line with the law, and also to inform the ICO’s enforcement activity, and the new version includes a greater focus on scenarios involving not-for-profit organisations.
The updated guidance gives more direction around third-party consent, and includes detail around consent being freely given.
The ICO’s head of policy delivery Steve Wood said:
“Our guidance makes clearer than ever that phrases like ‘are you happy to receive marketing from selected third parties’ will rarely be likely to demonstrate the law is being followed.
We’ve also included detail around consent being freely given. It isn’t within the law to unduly incentivise people to give their consent to marketing calls, nor typically to require consent to marketing as a condition of subscribing to a service.”
The ICO has also announced that it is working on other new guidance including an updated Privacy Notices Code, a checklist for selling and buying data, and standard wording for organisations to use when collecting personal data for marketing purposes.
The updated guidance can be downloaded from the ICO.
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.