The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined Elderly Aids Ltd (EAL) £190,000 after the company made 758,053 unsolicited marketing calls to people registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). The calls, made between May 2024 and February 2025, promoted call blocking devices that were supposedly designed to protect consumers from the very nuisance calls the company was making.
The ICO found that EAL deliberately targeted elderly and vulnerable people who had explicitly opted out of receiving marketing calls. Complaints described aggressive and misleading sales tactics, with callers frequently failing to identify themselves. One complainant reported that their father was persuaded to pay £139 upfront plus an ongoing £6.99 monthly fee for a service the company was not authorised to sell.
During the investigation, EAL repeatedly ignored the ICO’s requests for information and carried on making unlawful calls, prompting further complaints. The company also attempted to strike itself off the Companies House register once it became aware it was under regulatory scrutiny.
Alongside the monetary penalty, the ICO issued an enforcement notice requiring EAL to stop making unlawful marketing calls and to comply with caller identification requirements. The ICO has also made clear that where a business refuses to pay, it will pursue formal recovery action, including seeking the disqualification of directors.
What this means for your organisation
Any organisation carrying out telephone marketing must comply with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR). It is unlawful to make a live marketing call to anyone registered with the TPS unless that person has told your organisation specifically that they do not object to hearing from you. Breaches of PECR carry fines of up to £500,000, and, as this case shows, personal consequences for directors.
Practical steps worth reviewing this week:
- Screen every calling list against both the TPS and the Corporate TPS (CTPS) registers, and no more than 28 days before you call. Sole traders and most partnerships count as individuals for TPS purposes.
- Keep dated evidence of each screen, alongside your own do not call list, so you can demonstrate compliance rather than assert it.
- Make sure callers state who they are calling from and provide contact details on request. Caller identification failures were a specific point of enforcement here.
- Where you rely on a person having told you they do not object to your calls, record when and how that was given and be prepared to evidence it.
- Apply the same scrutiny to third party data and outsourced call centres. Buying a list or using an agency does not transfer your liability.
Privacy Helper takeaway
If your organisation carries out telephone marketing, robust TPS and CTPS screening is not optional, and neither is the record keeping that proves you did it. This case is a reminder that the ICO looks at conduct as well as process, and that targeting vulnerable people, or ignoring the regulator, will make the outcome considerably worse. If you are unsure whether your direct marketing activity stands up to scrutiny, our data protection gap analysis reviews your marketing consent, screening and record keeping against PECR and UK GDPR.
Source: ICO, ICO hits company selling call blockers with £190k fine for nuisance calls, 27 August 2026.
