The Italian Data Protection Authority Decides Against "Social Spam"

Background information/Scenario

On 29 November 2017, the Italian Data Protection Authority (the "Garante") once again decided against the malpractice of so-called "social spam". In its last newsletter, the Garante clarified that email addresses available on a social networks cannot be used for marketing activities in absence of an explicit and specific consent of the data subject for the mentioned commercial purpose.

Main issues

The decision, dated 21 September, arises from the report of a financial advisory company which denounced the reception by some of its promoters (physical persons) of several marketing emails in absence of their prior consent.

From the investigations carried out by the Garante it emerged that in the last two years around 100,000 advertising emails were sent and that the email addresses of the recipients had been collected mostly on Linkedin, Facebook and other social networks.