The Direct Marketing Association has expelled from its membership a marketing data list broker following a “serious” breach of practice.
Infomonitor Global LLC, which trades as Data Providers UK and B2B Data Lists Group, was the subject of 10 complaints from non-DMA members between October 2010 and July 2011.
Following an investigation it has been found to have broke the self-regulatory code of practice that DMA members must abide by “on a repeated basis”.
According to the Direct Marketing Commission, the company sold data without proper regard for whether it met client requirements, unreasonably sought to absolve itself of responsibility for the data and refused refunds or offered them only as a last resort.
Read more on The Drum.
When I first saw the headline, I got excited, thinking that maybe a company had been expelled for some privacy-related breach, so I went browsing on DMA’s web site, where I learned that one of the complaints “concerned a consumer who had received an unwanted email and had requested further information as to the origins of the list used so he could ascertain how his data was sourced.” But overall, the expulsion did not appear to be privacy-related. Oh well…