“The Spanish clairvoyant reaches 100×100 7 euros 20 minutes.” “New to the team, anyone who consults her is surprised. If you want a real medium, call ***.” “High level of clairvoyance, I have been a professional for over 30 years, I use a letter and a 22 min 9th pendulum.” “Natural medium, I visualize everything without you telling me anything, I do consultations in person and I don’t have an 806 phone number, only my landline *** 22 min x 9e.”
The list continues until 242 SMS messages of the same nature were sent to the same phone number in a period of just three months, between August and November 2021. The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) imposed a fine of 30,010 euros to a company that offers. clairvoyance and tarot services for this massive sending of advertising without offering recipients a simple and free method to unsubscribe from this distribution.
The origin of this case is a complaint filed by a person who received these hundreds of SMS messages, from Monday to Sunday and sometimes up to three times a day. Several dozen of them appear reflected in the resolution of the privacy regulator, published this week.
The messages were accompanied by robophone calls, the person reported. “During calls, as soon as we answer the phone, a recorded voice-over offers us clairvoyance services; by SMS likewise, by identifying a landline and/or mobile telephone number that we must call if we are interested in said services,” specifies the resolution.
The clairvoyance company Rianlu Europa, based in Alcorcón (Madrid), claimed that sending the messages was justified because the applicant had previously called the company to request its services. Its managers justify that their customers “automatically” activated the sending of advertising by SMS when they called the switchboard. Furthermore, they recognize that the shipping time was even longer than what the service provider denounces, since it took place from April 2021 to May 2022.
According to the company’s version, the high number of advertising messages is due to the fact that she received up to 49 calls from her cell phone. “If the applicant continued to receive SMS messages, this was solely and exclusively motivated by the new and repeated calls made from this number, as we explained, either by her or by people from her environment who had access to said number and which produced, in an “automatic manner, 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 messages, Rianlu denies this and clarifies that “these calls were never intended to request cancellation, they were intended to speak with our tarot readers or mediums”. It also indicates that the first contact was made by the service provider in January 2021, before the first advertising messages were sent.
The AEPD does not go into the merits of this matter nor does it verify the veracity of the call list provided by the clairvoyance company. On the contrary, it specifies that, whether these took place or not, the sanction process focused on the sending of advertising SMS without the possibility of unsubscribing from their receipt, and not on the fact that the complainant uses or not the company’s clairvoyance services. Let us also remember that the law requires the establishment of this mechanism for stopping commercial communications in all cases.
“The constant receipt of SMS 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 this also placed her in a helpless position, since she did not know the identity of the company charged to send advertising by SMS and, therefore, could not request the cancellation of said advertising service”, specifies the Agency.
Although the company claimed to have included this possibility of deregistration after the start of the procedure, the AEPD did not consider it a sufficient mitigating circumstance to avoid the sanction. The fine of 30,010 euros corresponds to the lowest range of sanctions provided for as “serious” in the Information Society Services Act for sending unsolicited commercial communications (30,001 euros to 150,000 euros, “very serious” offenses ranging from 150,001 to 600,000 euros).
