Uber Australia, the rideshare and food delivery company, has been fined $412,500 following an infringement notice for sending over 2 million spam emails, breaching Australian spam laws.
An ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) investigation found the company sent marketing emails to customers without an unsubscribe option.
Over 500,000 messages were sent to customers who had unsubscribed previously.
The emails were sent on one single day in January this year, and were part of an advertising campaign for an alcohol home delivery service.
Said investigation found the breaches occurred due to Uber micharacterising emails as non-commercial.
The Spam Act requires businesses to have consent before sending direct electronic marketing messages, as well as providing recipients with the option to unsubscribe.
The ACMA said. “We are actively monitoring Uber’s compliance and will not hesitate to take stronger action if it doesn’t comply in the future. This is a warning to all businesses conducting e-marketing that they should be actively and regularly reviewing their marketing to ensure it is compliant.”
A spokesperson for Uber said, “Simply put, we made a mistake in sending out these marketing emails, and we worked collaboratively with ACMA to address and resolve it. We apologise to everyone who was impacted by this oversight. We take seriously our obligations under the Spam Act, and we have introduced additional measures to prevent this from happening again.”
