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.
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
“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.