Annoying call companies face fines of up to £ 17.5 million, and Internet users will be able to limit the appearance of pop-up consent boxes under a government review of the UK’s data rules. United Kingdom.
The financial penalty for cold callers will increase from the current maximum of £ 500,000 and will be in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which can issue a fine of up to £ 17.5 million or 4% of a company’s overall turnover.
The new fines regime is part of the data reform bill, which was announced in the Queen’s speech and is expected to become law next year. The fines were imposed by the Office of the Information Commissioner, who first imposed a £ 500,000 fine last year on a Glasgow-based company that made more than 193 million automated calls in one year.
Phone Preferences allows you to block persistent calls, but only blocks calls from people, not computer generated calls.
The invoice will also be directed to the pop-up consent boxes for cookies. Cookies are text files entered into a user’s browser by a website, which can then record their activity. Under the new proposals, an exclusion model will be introduced, with the aim of reducing the need for users to click through the consent banners on each website they visit.
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport said users of the website will be able to set their cookie preferences so that they can be disabled by automated means.
The bill will also loosen some data protection requirements for small businesses under the GDPR, including the need for a data protection officer and conducting assessments of where data could be at risk. The DCMS said the reforms will generate more than £ 1bn in business savings over 10 years. Both annoying call and cookie rules are being updated in accordance with existing UK privacy and electronic communications regulations.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said the new bill would help “grow the economy and improve society” while maintaining the UK’s “global gold standard for data protection”. The bill also proposes to reform the ICO by giving it a presidency, a CEO and a board, along with a new set of objectives.
UK Information Commissioner John Edwards said: “The proposed changes will ensure that my office can continue to function as a reliable, fair and impartial regulator, and allow us to be more flexible and direct our action in response. to the greatest damage “.