Data Subjects' Consent: Announcement published by the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection
Share
On the 25th May 2018, the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection published an announcement regarding consent in the context of direct marketing of products or services via email or sms. The announcement was clarifying the following:
The data subjects need to be informed for the purpose of the processing and give their consent in advance, during the data collection stage.
The consent obtained must be explicit, not understood or implied without being stated. In general, consent must be given in such a way that it can be easily demonstrated when requested.
The requirements on what constitutes consent are clear, thus, opposition or implied consent do not fall under the definition of consent. For example an email or sms stating “If you do not want to receive any messages from us please send a message or call at this number” does not meet the requirements set out.
Sending a message similar to the above for obtaining consent from persons who have not previously given their explicit consent or they are not clients or they have already requested not to receive such messages, is not legal. Such a message is regarded to be an indirect advertisement for the company or organization and as the GDPR explicitly states “advertising messages are not allowed to be sent without the previous explicit consent obtained or without the recipients being previous clients of your company or organization”.
For further information or help on GDPR matters, do not hesitate to contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
