Marketing agencies use all means to attract as many clients as possible
Belgrade – With the aim to promote their products and services, many marketing agencies use all means to attract as many clients as possible and they often even abuse citizens' personal data. Namely, the editorial board of our magazine was contacted by citizens who claim that they sent SMS to an organizer of a prize competition according to the rules of that competition, but certain marketing agencies called them the next day to participate in a market survey. When citizens asked them who gave them their phone numbers, they replied that they had received phone numbers from the organizer of the prize competition.
This is not the only such case in Serbia. Citizens also often receive at their home addresses letters informing them that they are potential winners of valuable cash and commodity prizes if they buy products of a certain company. Gullible persons often fall victims to such frauds and they buy expensive products, but as a rule they never win prizes. There are also agencies which use phonebooks and offer cleaning of apartments or houses free of charge, but then they try to sell gadgets of which many cost up to several thousand euros. Although the number of citizens who contact the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection is increasing fast, there were more than 600 of them only in the first six months of this year, the number of those who complain about organization of prize competitions is not high.
"Of course, this does not mean that there will be no complaints, on the contrary. After all, in this field, as well as in most of the other fields, we have a fundamental problem – insufficient and inadequate legal arrangements. For example, processing of personal data of winners in prize competitions is regulated only by the Bylaw on the Manner of Maintaining a Database on Persons who Win Prizes from Organizers of Games of Chances. And Article 42 of the Constitution sets out: „collecting, keeping, processing and use of personal data shall be regulated by the law". By the law, instead of secondary legislation such as a bylaw or a similar enactment", said Mr. Sabic.
He emphasized that marketing agencies can collect or use citizens' personal data only if they receive consent or agreement from a person to whom the data pertain.
„Consent should be unambiguous, which means that it should be completely clear to which purpose, data and volume of data it pertains. Unfortunately, it is evident that they obtain such data in various manners, most frequently from databases established for completely different purposes", emphasized Mr. Sabic.
Our collocutor said that in several previous cases he mainly responded to disproportionate, excessive use of personal data. For example, to obtaining of unique personal identification numbers from all participants in a prize competition and in one case it was even requested from participants to write these data at the back of the envelope by which they enter a prize competition, which made these personal data available to the general public and increased the possibility of abuse and unjustified use.
"Organizers responded adequately to the Commissioner's warnings. In one case the Commissioner performed inspection in a company which congratulated birthdays for marketing purposes by discount coupons which were also invitations to enter a prize competition. On Commissioner's request to explain how they obtained data on birth dates of persons with whom they communicated, they „of course" did not provide acceptable explanation and processing was also forbidden in this case and a petition was filed with a magistrate's court for the initiation of infringement proceedings", said Mr. Sabic.
