CRTC Fines Telelisting $260,000 for Breaking Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced today that Telelisting will pay $260,000 in monetary penalties as part of a settlement for violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules.
Telelisting provides telephone directory services for online lead generation.
Acting on information received from Canadians, the CRTC investigated Telelisting for alleged violations of the Rules. The CRTC concluded that the company had divulged contents of the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) to its clients in violation of the Rules.
“The information that Canadians have provided to the National Do Not Call List administrator has been extremely helpful to us in our investigation of Telelisting,” Manon Bombardier, Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, CRTC.
During the period from July 2012 to July 2014, Telelisting shared contents of the DNCL with persons outside its organization; those persons had not paid a subscription fee to the DNCL operator or were not subscribers.
“We would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that reselling information obtained from a subscription to the List is forbidden, and that it is the duty of anyone making telemarketing calls to comply with the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules,” Bombardier added.
The use of third-party telephone directory services is not a replacement for a subscription to the DNCL, says the CRTC. All telemarketers, including real estate agents and brokers, must subscribe to the DNCL.
The DNCL was launched in 2008 to protect Canadians from unsolicited telecommunications. To date, the CRTC’s enforcement efforts have yielded over $5.7 million in monetary penalties.
