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Dear Mr Oldham
Thank you for your complaint dated 10th September 2008 regarding the emails that your nephew receives to his domain name, [email address deleted].
Please accept my apologies for the delay in replying to you, our office is currently dealing with large volumes of work. This has meant that we have been unable to deal with incoming correspondence as promptly as we would like.
The Information Commissioner advises on and enforces the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (the Regulations). These are concerned with the way in which organisations send marketing material by electronic means (for example using telephone, fax, text and email). Marketing can include the promotion of goods, services, aims or ideals.
Regulation 22 says that organisations should not send unsolicited direct marketing by electronic mail to individual subscribers without their prior consent.
There is an exemption this rule which can apply in the case of a clearly defined customer relationship. However an organisation must satisfy all 3 of the following criteria for this exemption to apply. They are that:
- Contact details are collected 'in the course of a sale or negotiations for a sale'.
- Contact details are only used to send marketing messages about similar products and services.
- Recipients are given the opportunity to opt-out when their details are initially collected and are given the opportunity to opt-out with every subsequent marketing communication.
However, having read the content of the email that you have sent as part of your complaint it does not appear to be unsolicited marketing. It appears to be from a solicited alert service that the previous owner of the domain signed up to. As such, whilst I appreciate that you are having problems in asking them to stop sending these emails, as they are not unsolicited marketing emails, then there is nothing that the Information Commissioner's Office can do in this instance.
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