Decision of the Personal Data Protection Authority on Advertisement Notifications and Calls

On November 1, 2018, the decision of the Personal Data Protection Authority (the “Authority”) on advertisement notifications and calls have been published in the Official Gazette. With its Decision numbered 2018/119, the Authority resolved to prohibit advertisement notifications/calls through e-mails, SMS messages or phone calls, without obtaining explicit consent of the data subjects, as a result of various claims directed to the Authority and the Authority’s resulting investigation.

With this decision, the Authority resolved that:

all data controllers making calls, sending SMS messages or e-mails, or processing such data for advertisement purposes, without obtaining explicit consent of the relevant data subjects, in violation of data processing requirements provided under clause 5 of the Data Protection Law, shall promptly cease all data processing activities;

all data controllers are required to take all technical and administrative precautions, to maintain appropriate security measures ensuring that the data is processed, accessed, protected in accordance with clause 12 of the Data Protection Law, and if such data is processed by third persons on behalf of a data controller then such data controller shall be held jointly liable with these third persons to take the aforementioned precautions; and

all data controllers violating the aforementioned shall be subject to an administrative fine up to TL 1 million and if a data controller has obtained such data illegally, then the relevant data controller shall be subject to criminal penalty for up to four years, as provided under Article 136 of the Turkish Criminal Code numbered 5237.

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