CASL Fines: Rogers Media Pays $200K
The CRTC announced that Rogers Media, a subsidiary of the Rogers Communications group, has been fined $200,000 for violating the Canada’s Anti-Spam Law.
Sloppy unsubscribe mechanisms
The allegations against Rogers Media are related to non-compliant (i.e.: mismanaged) unsubscribe mechanisms in their commercial electronic messages.
Rogers Media agreed that its unsubscribe links did not always work, were not always easy to activate, and sometimes did not remain active for the required 60-days after the commercial message was sent. Rogers Media also acknowledged that unsubscribes were not always completed within the 10-day grace period.
It should be noted that Rogers Media was not fined for sending commercial messages to people who had not provided consent, like many other companies that were penalised by the CRTC, but only for the mismanagement of their unsubscribe mechanisms.
Total fines rise to nearly $31.5M
This file brings the total amount of fines issued by the CRTC to $1,498,000 plus the $30M in fines imposed by the Competition Bureau for a total of $31,498,000 in penalties under CASL.
SMBs represent 60% of the CRTC’s cases investigated under the Canadian Anti-Spam Act.
The fines released today include:
- Compu-Finder, a Quebec SMB from Morin Heights, Quebec, fined $ 1.1M
- Plentyoffish Media, a Vancouver-British Columbia SMB, fined $48,000
- Avis, Budget, and AvisBudget Group, Toronto, Ontario received $10 million in fines each
- Porter Airlines, Toronto to Ontario fined $150,000
- Rogers Media, Toronto, Ontario, fined $200,000
Since the CRTC is not required to disclose all the details of its cases and/or investigations, other companies may have also have been fined for unknown amounts. (Are you one of them? We want to hear from you.)
Your only defence…
The only defence that the Act offers businesses is that of due diligence through the implementation of a compliance program that meets the CRTC’s eight requirements.
