Telstra has paid a $626,000 fine and offered a comprehensive court-enforceable undertaking after it sent nearly 10.5 million text messages that did not comply with Australia’s spam laws.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) investigation found that Telstra sent 10,433,812 texts with unsubscribe arrangements in breach of the law over a 21-month period from 2022 to 2024, including over 10.3 million that required recipients to provide personal information to opt out.
Under Australian law, businesses cannot require consumers to log in to accounts or provide personal information to unsubscribe from receiving further commercial messages except where the consumers have agreed to such arrangements.
The ACMA investigation also found that a further 43,228 texts were sent between October 2022 and July 2023 to customers of Telstra’s ‘Belong’ brand who either had not consented or had withdrawn their consent to receive these messages.
Telstra self-reported these matters to the ACMA and had implemented fixes to most of the underlying causes before the ACMA commenced its investigation.
ACMA member Samantha Yorke said given the age of the matters, the ACMA infringement notice was the maximum able to be applied in this instance.
“The spam consent rules have been in force for over 20 years and Telstra, as a mature and established company, has no excuse for this type of non-compliance," she said.
“Consumers must be able to unsubscribe without giving businesses more personal information than is required."
The court-enforceable undertaking commits Telstra to invest in a comprehensive independent review and implementation of recommended improvements, as well as regular reporting to the ACMA. The undertaking will provide the ACMA with assurance that remediation already undertaken by Telstra is working.
Over the last 18 months businesses have paid over $16 million in spam penalties.
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