Italy's data protection authority, Garante Privacy, has fined TIM (Telecom Italia) a total of EUR 27.8 million for aggressive telemarketing tactics and breaches of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In a statement, the watchdog said it received hundreds of complaints from January 2017 to the start of 2019 about unsolicited promotional calls to customers who had specifically asked not to receive such calls. The company also infringed data processing rules with regard to prize competitions and forms submitted to users, among other breaches, said the authority.
TIM was also accused of failing to update blacklists of people who don’t want to receive advertising and mentioned one person who was called 155 times in a month without consent. In addition to the fines, the authority ordered TIM keep blacklists updated and ensure call centres no longer call people who had expressed their refusal to receive promotional calls.
It was also banned TIM from using customer data collected through the MyTIM, TIMPersonal and TIM Smart Kid apps for purposes other than the provision of services without specific customer consent.
