Telephone canvassing: 310,000 euros fine for this company which had no right to use your data

The CNIL imposed a fine of 310,000 euros on the company Foriou, which specializes in telephone canvassing. According to the authority, it used data without having obtained real consent from the people being prospected.

Telephone canvassing is already painful enough as it is (we all think so), so if on top of that it is not done under very legal conditions, it is even more problematic. The National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties (CNIL) formalized, Tuesday March 5, 2024, the sanction pronounced against the company Foriou, which used data obtained from brokers, without having had proof that their owners had validly consented to canvassing.

The canvassing company could not legally use the data collected

First, who are we talking about? Here, the CNIL sanctioned the Foriou company. Specializing in cashbacks and commercial discounts, it carries out telephone canvassing campaigns which allow it to promote the loyalty cards it markets.

To do this, he needs data, people to contact in other words. It obtains this information from data brokers, product tests or publishers of competition sites. Except that during various checks, the CNIL noted “ the misleading appearance of the collection forms implemented by the brokers behind the collection ”, which in reality did not make it possible to obtain valid consent from the consumers concerned.

In other words, Foriou could not legally use this data to engage in cold calling. The CNIL, which accuses it of having violated article 6 of the GDPR (general data protection regulations), imposed a fine of 310,000 euros, corresponding to 1% of the company’s turnover.

Data brokers collect a veritable goldmine of information for direct marketers

We will add that brokers collect your personal data using participation forms for competitions for example, which go so far as to ask you for your name, first name(s), e-mail, telephone number. , date of birth, address, postal code and city. A real gold mine.

The CNIL considers that these forms do not allow free and unequivocal consent to be collected. The authority notes that the validation buttons are, for example, too emphasized, by their size and color, which almost encourages users to accept. In return, the “ hypertext links allowing you to participate in the game without accepting this transmission » data is too little visible.

If brokers use stratagems that border on the law, it was up to the Foriou company to verify that the users concerned had indeed expressed valid consent. Last criticism made against the company: it did not always appear on the list of partners of data brokers, likely to approach the people concerned.

Source : CNIL