The user’s right to object to the use of data for direct marketing shall be respected. And mechanisms of reception of their instances shall be efficient and manned.

Is the principle stressed by the Italian Data Protection Authority which has warned a society for have not acknowledged to requests of some users that did not want to receive anymore promotional email and it has ordered to adopt the organizational measures necessary to provide an immediate response to who is objecting the direct marketing.

To the society has been forbidden the processing of personal data without a consent and for noted breaches it has been inflicted a sanction of 30.000 euros.

The proceeding came from two complainants with which the authority complained the reception of promotional emails send by the society, without the consent and despite the objection of recipients by pec.

The complainants report also the impossibility to stop the sending by the unsubscribe button which was into the emails and the absolute lack of feedback in their requests of exercise of rights.

The society defended itself by mentioning that the lack of the feedback is due to the fact that the pec address has not being controlled for months due to organizational problems and that their users shall exercise their rights by using the form of the link “contact us”, like it was indicated into the privacy policy published online.

Those were insufficient justification according to the Authority. Since the exams of the emails received by complainants, some of them dating back to 2018 was surged that the only way to identify a communication channel was the pec.

At the end the unsubscribe button available into the emails was not working, like it was demonstrated by the thing that, despite its usage one of the complainants had continued receiving unwanted messages.

The Authority has thought that the absence of clear indication, inside the same promotional emails, on moods for contacting the society, joined with the lack of adequate technical and organizational measures, that should have permitted the functioning of the button “unsubscribe” and the correct control of the pec, made impossible to complainants to exercise their rights, by acting the send of promotional communications even with an expressed objection.

SOURCE: AUTORITA’ PER LA PROTEZIONE DEI DATI DELL’ITALIA – GPDP