Food delivery company HelloFresh is nursing a £140,000 ($178k) fine by Britain’s data privacy watchdog after a probe found it had dispatched upwards of a staggering 79 million spam email and one million texts in just seven months.
The meal-kit company provides weekly packages of premeasured ingredients with recipes so customers can prepare their own meals rather than winging it at the grocery store.
The Information Commissioner’s Office says the company claimed messages were based on an opt-in statement, yet this statement did not include any reference to the sending of marketing messages via text. There was a nod to email marketing, however, this was included in an age confirmation statement that was “likely to unfairly incentivize customers to agree”.
