Ita­ly: fine of EUR 16.7 mil­li­on against a tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons provider

The Ita­li­an data pro­tec­tion super­vi­so­ry aut­ho­ri­ty, the Garan­te, has a fine of EUR 16.7 mil­li­on. against Wind Tre SpA an Ita­li­an tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons pro­vi­der. The rea­son was seve­ral data pri­va­cy vio­la­ti­ons in con­nec­tion with direct mar­ke­ting mea­su­res. The gua­ran­tor had recei­ved hundreds of com­plaints becau­se Wind Tre had sent adver­ti­sing mes­sa­ges by SMS, e‑mail and – in some cases auto­ma­ted – calls wit­hout con­sent, even to peo­p­le with adver­ti­sing blocking, and an adver­ti­sing objec­tion was appar­ent­ly not easi­ly pos­si­ble becau­se the rele­vant infor­ma­ti­on in the pri­va­cy poli­cy was incom­ple­te. In addi­ti­on, users of two apps were appar­ent­ly only able to revo­ke the com­pul­so­ry con­sent to cer­tain pro­ce­s­sing during the first 24 hours. In addi­ti­on, the­re were also vio­la­ti­ons in the invol­vement of con­tract processors.