Woolworths fined over $1 million for spamming consumers
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has fined retail giant Woolworths over $1 million for breaching the Spam Act.
It is the largest ever infringement notice ever issued by ACMA.
Minister for communications, cyber security and the arts, Paul Fletcher, said spam causes dissatisfaction and distrust amongst consumers, and makes it harder for legitimate businesses to communicate effectively.
“My message to business is simple: don’t send spam,” he said this morning. “And if you do – expect to be caught and pay a fine.”
He said the Government is serious about fighting spam.
“If recipients consent to receiving sales and marketing information – no problem. But if there’s no consent – it’s illegal.”
ACMA said Woolworths was responsible for over five million breaches of the Spam Act when it sent marketing emails to consumers who had already unsubscribed. The offences occurred between October 2018 and July 2019.
ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said the investigation found Woolworths’ systems, processes and practices were inadequate.
“The spam rules have been in place for 17 years and Woolworths is a large and sophisticated organisation. The scale and prolonged nature of the non-compliance is inexcusable,” O’Loughlin said.
“Woolworths failed to act even after the ACMA had warned it of potential compliance issues after receiving consumer complaints.”
She echoed Fletcher’s sentiments and said the penalty should act as a warning to other businesses.
Woolworths has since committed to appointing an independent consultant to review its systems, processes and procedures and to implement improvements. It will also conduct training and report any non-compliance to ACMA.
And ACMA will be watching, O’Loughlin said.
“The ACMA will be actively monitoring Woolworths’ compliance with the spam laws and the commitments it has made to the ACMA.”
Woolworths said it accepts ACMA’s position and apologised for its errors.
“We respect the right of our Rewards members to choose how and when we communicate with them and apologise for failing to act on all unsubscribe requests as required under the law,” Woolies X managing director Amanda Bardwell said.
“Many of the breaches were the result of technical and systems issues, which we fixed in 2019.
“Subsequent breaches occurred because we continued sending communications to email addresses shared by multiple Rewards members, where only one member had made an unsubscribe request.
“While we were acting on unsubscribe requests from individual Rewards members, we did not assume it meant other members sharing that email address had to be opted-out as well.
“The ACMA has made clear it expects all communications to an email address to stop in such scenarios.
“We accept this position and have unsubscribed all members who share an email address where at least one of those members has told us they want to unsubscribe.”
topics
ACMA
Amanda Bardwell
Australian Communications and Media Authority
Nerida O'Loughlin
Paul Fletcher
spam
spamming
Woolworths
You would have thought whoever the responsible parties were at Wooliesx had a better handle on spam and consent. A small scale breach could be easily blamed on technical issues. To have it running for 9 months and incur 5 million Spam Act breaches is just plain incompetence
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“Subsequent breaches occurred because we continued sending communications to email addresses shared by multiple Rewards members, where only one member had made an unsubscribe request.”
This is particularly concerning for marketers. Most sophisticated marketing automation platforms operate on a unique identifier like membership number or customer ID. I can absolutely see Woolies’ reasoning that a shared email address is being used and only one member’s unsubscribe is being honoured because that’s how marketers should treat customers – as unique individuals. If ACMA’s stance is channel specific rather than consumer specific then the Spam Act needs to be more clearly defined.
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