Cryptocurrency exchange Binance Australia has paid the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) $2,200,220 as an infringement notice bailout related to spam charges.
A seven-month investigation by the ACMA found that the crypto exchange had sent over 5.7 million promotional emails between October 2021 and May 2022 that upon further inspection presented a difficult task to be switched off. Furthermore, 25 emails were sent without any present consent from the recipient.
ACMA Chair Nerida O’Loughlin highlighted that it is a customer’s given right to be able to disable any commercial messages associated with an account of theirs without having to steer away in different directions.
“Customers should not be made to log-in to stop receiving messages. It is very concerning that we continue to see breaches of the spam laws from large size companies that should have good compliance practices in place. The Spam Act has been in force since 2003, so there are simply no excuses.
“It is also disappointing that the ACMA had contacted Binance Australia on several occasions leading up to the investigation to warn it that it may have had compliance problems and it failed to take adequate action.”
There is also a three-year, court-enforceable undertaking agreed by the ACMA in place that obligates Binance Australia to an independent review of its e-marketing practices and evidence of improvement at the end of it.
This is the latest in ACMA’s crackdown on spam practices in Australia, with businesses paying just over $6.3m over the last 18 months for breaching e- and telemarketing regulations. The newest court-enforceable undertaking brings the total number to 13, with two additional formal warnings trailing behind.
You can view the ACMA’s next-year priority list that focuses on preventing spam attacks here, while recent ACMA spam act enforcement actions can be seen here.
Relevant complaints can be raised on the Australian government website.
