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EDITOR’S QUESTION
TOM HARWOOD, CHIEF
PRODUCT OFFICER AND CO-
FOUNDER AT AERIANDI
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DPR is mandatory – not a choice
– and regulators will want to make
examples of companies that don’t
comply. For example, the ICO recently raided
a firm responsible for making 200 million
nuisance calls. But it currently relies on
enforcing fuzzy rules around people giving
inferred, rather than specific, consent for
their phone numbers to be used in this way.
It’s likely most fell victim to the ‘opt out
of marketing’ tick box exercise we see on
so many forms these days. The ICO is also
currently limited by a maximum penalty
of £500,000, which for some companies is
worth the risk. This type of thing has reduced
consumer trust in telephone calls from
legitimate businesses and at times serves
as another avenue for criminals looking to
commit fraud.
Essentially, these are spam calls. While this
is not a new phenomenon, technology
has enabled it to scale to a level where it
is a significant problem. The same thing
happened with email. It’s estimated up
to half of all emails sent are now spam,
because while physical junk mail is limited
by production costs, email is free. Internet
telephony, particularly Voice over IP (VoIP)
services such as Skype, has dramatically
reduced the cost of making phone calls.
Add in an automation platform and you
have the ability to run an operation that can
remarkably make 200 million recorded calls
and still turn a profit.
Advanced telephony does, however, provide
us with a range of tools to defend against
this, including secure ways of providing
credit card details using the telephone
keypad, voice fraud detection and speech
analytics. Voice fraud detection, for example,
looks at far more than the user’s voice print;
it considers hundreds, if not thousands, of
other parameters. For example, is the phone
number being used legitimate? Has it been
used fraudulently before? These tools are
www.intelligentcio.com
becoming increasingly important in the fight
against telephony misuse, but the ICO needs
more teeth.
With GDPR, the ICO’s position will be greatly
improved for cases like this. Consumers
will have more rights over how their phone
numbers are used and the ICO will be
in a better position to investigate and
fine organisations making broad-brush
marketing calls. While the ICO has said
that it will take a ‘fair and reasonable’
approach to enforcement after the May
2018 implementation date, it is likely it
will be looking to make examples of those
companies that have failed to prepare for
the changes. These businesses will have to
comply or face the consequences.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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