A fine of 200,000 euros for the Rico al instante spam, condemned by FACUA and hundreds of consumers

The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) has imposed a fine of 200,000 euros on Ocio Factory Time for its mass spam sent by text message which was a by-product of the TV competition Rico al instante.

The company was condemned in January 2011 by FACUA- Consumers in Action, who put forward the details of ten users concerned, members of the organization, who had received text messages urging them to get involved in the competition in which, on top of that, there was no free way suggested as to how to stop the spam.  In total, the AEPD managed to accumulate more than 400 complaints.

FACUA argued that Ocio Factory Time, now called Zed Iberia, was sending commercial text messages on a mass scale to users without a previous request or authorization, in this way bre