Birmingham-based pendant alarm company fined £100,000 for making unsolicited marketing calls

• Date 26 March 2026

• Type News

• Company made over 260,000 calls over a seven-month period

• Employees misled call recipients with false identities

• Company director admitted he had used another company’s data

We have fined a Birmingham-based company £100,000 for making over 260,000 unsolicited marketing sales calls to numbers registered on the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), in a clear breach of law.

TMAC Ltd, which sells personal pendant alarms and security systems, made the predatory calls between February and September 2024 to people who may need extra support to protect themselves, including the elderly.

Call transcripts have revealed that TMAC employees did not reveal their true identity, claiming to be calling on behalf of a variety of different local crime and fire prevention initiatives in an attempt to dupe recipients.

The transcripts also appear to show that callers were actively targeting people aged over 60 years old as part of the unlawful activity.

Furthermore, one of TMAC’s company directors admitted that the telephone numbers had been taken from second-hand data that had been acquired at a company he had previously worked for.

“When people register with the TPS it is because they want to protect themselves from unwanted marketing calls. TMAC’s actions showed a brazen disregard for privacy laws – making thousands of intrusive calls each month and failing to identify themselves to the recipients.

“We are grateful to those who reported these calls to us. Public reporting plays a crucial role in our work, and where we see organisations causing harm through unlawful and predatory direct marketing, we will not hesitate to act.”

- Andy Curry, Head of Investigations
Enforcement action has been made under section 40 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and i ssued due to serious contravention of regulations 21 and 24 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

Under PECR, companies must not make live marketing calls to anyone who has registered with the TPS unless they have explicit consent and organisations are legally required to screen their calling lists against the TPS register before making calls.

Callers must also identify who they are when making the call, make their telephone number visible, and provide contact details or a way for the recipient to contact them.

To stop live and automated marketing calls, the ICO advises people to:

• Register their landline or mobile number with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) free of charge. The TPS is a register of people who have said they don’t want to receive marketing calls. Consumers should be aware that if they agreed an organisation could make live marketing calls to them, but then go on to register with the TPS, the organisation can still legitimately call them. Individuals will need to contact directly to tell them formally ask them to stop calling.
• Report any nuisance calls that they continue to receive to us using its online reporting tool.
• Refer complaints about a business’s practices to Trading Standards through Citizens Advice and complaints about silent or abandoned calls to Ofcom. Businesses can also consult with the ICO’s direct marketing guidance to ensure compliance with the law.

We worked alongside National Trading Standards Scams Teams and Truecall as part of this investigation.

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Notes to editors

For more information or to request an interview with Andy Curry, ICO Head of Investigations please contact: [email protected]

1. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the UK’s independent regulator for data protection and information rights law, upholding information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.
2. The ICO has specific responsibilities set out in the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018), the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR), Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) and a further five acts and regulations.
3. The ICO can take action to address and change the behaviour of organisations and individuals that collect, use and keep personal information. This includes criminal prosecution, non-criminal enforcement and audit.
4. To report a concern to the ICO telephone our helpline 0303 123 1113 or go to ico.org.uk/concerns.