The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) handed out a record number of fines to companies in January, with financial services firms accounting for almost half of them, suggesting that pressure is being ramped up ahead of the incoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Nine separate companies were given penalties by the independent authority in the first month of the year – the highest for any one month, according to analysis by The SMS Works. Fines were issued for all of the main types of offences that the ICO oversees, including email spam, SMS spam, nuisance calls and data protection breaches, the research revealed.

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