Catalogue retailer Easylife has been fined £1.48mln for using customers’ personal information to attempt to sell them health-related products without their consent.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined the company £1.35mln for using purchase history to predict the medical conditions of 145,400 customers and target them with related health solutions.
ICO’s investigation discovered Easylife made assumptions about customers’ medical conditions when buying goods from its Health Club catalogue, before calling the individual to market related products to them.
For example, if a person had purchased a jar opener or dinner tray, Easylife assumed the consumer had something like arthritis.
ICO found that “significant” and “invisible” profiling of customers took place, with them being unaware their personal data was being collected and used.
Easylife, meanwhile, was also fined a further £130,000 for making over 1.3mln predatory marketing calls that made people feel angry, anxious, threatened and distressed. ICO received 16 complaints regarding this.
“Easylife was not only found guilty of breaching data protection law, but our investigation also discovered that they made thousands of predatory marketing calls to people who clearly did not want to receive them,” ICO commented.