Troublesome Phone Calls and Junk Mail

I am sometimes called to jobs where a member of the public has been receiving suspicious phone calls, and are concerned whether they have a crank caller.  Whilst it is mostly impossible at first contact for a police officer to distinguish between a genuine tele-marketing phone call from a malicious call, people sometimes seek advice from police about how to stop receiving such calls. For the elderly, tele-marketing calls are often a problem as they tend to be at home when such calls are made.

The following advice will reduce or eliminate the circulation of your personal data for the purposes of marketing purposes, and hence the reduction of junk mail, spam emails and tele-marketing. The subject is quite complex, and I will give a comprehensive explanation of the various aspects of law and industry practice. However, the following bullet points act as a quick summary of how best to prevent unwanted mailings and phone calls.

Quick Guide

• Only give your personal details to companies from which you buy a product or service
• If you think that an aspect of what is being collected is not required for provision of that service, do not give such information (e.g. is an email address essential for provision of gas?  It may be if they bill you online.)
• If you do not want to receive marketing letters, calls or emails from that company, read the small print and tick (or otherwise) the appropriate boxes on the application form. Pay particular attention to any privacy statement or fair processing statement
• If you have an existing customer relationship with a company, you must write to each and every company that could have your personal details, and tell them that you do not want them to process your personal data for marketing purposes, or give your data to third parties for marketing purposes
• Do not complete prize draw or surveys without checking the small print about how they will use your data
• Register with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS), see below
• Register with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), seel below
• When you move house and write to companies requesting a change to your address, remind them that you do not want your data used for marketing purposes
• When moving house, re-register with MPS and TPS

Be Aware Of...

Doing the above will minimise the situations where you receive direct mail or unwanted phone calls.  However, please be aware of the following:

• Take care with tick boxes and be satisfied about the meaning of ‘a tick’.  Does a tick mean that you opt out of marketing, or allow it?
• MPS and TPS registration takes approx 28 days to filter through the system
• If you are a customer of a company and you have not opted-out of marketing, they do not have to remove you from tele-marketing even if you are registered with TPS.  This is why you must write to each company to advise them not to process your data for marketing purposes.
• If a company has obtained your name and phone number from a marketing list broker and that company wants to phone you for the purposes of marketing, and your are not already a customer of that company, they must use TPS to remove your name from that marketing.  However, the relevant legislation applies only to calls made from within the UK and is applicable to voice calls only.  Some companies call from outside the UK, thus bending but not breaking the law.
• Where your name is captured legally together with your consent to be used for marketing purposes, your details will continue to circulate on various lists for some time to come.
• Use of MPS is not covered by law, but advertising codes of practice state that companies should remove names on MPS from their mailings where not a person is not a customer of that company
• Some small companies are ignorant of the law in respect of data
• Sometimes mistakes happen, and names are not screened out when they should be.  This typically happens when names are spelt incorrectly, or addresses on a company’s system is slightly different to that held on MPS.

Making a complaint

Should you receive a cold call from a company that you have never heard of, you should do two things:

• request that your name is marked on their records as no marketing, or just to remove your details from their database
• ascertain details of that company and make a note of the date and time of call

The Information Commissioner's Office website (see link below) has some good advice in respect of making complaints

A More Detailed Explanation

The whole subject is complex and needs to be broken down.

Definitions

The main piece of legislation around use of any personal data, is the Data Protection Act 1998.  Personal data is defined as anything that is held electronically or otherwise, which can reasonably be seen to relate to a living individual.  Any company who holds and processes data on a living individual has to be registered with the Information Commission, and adhere to the eight principles of the Data Protection Act 1988 (DPA) and the Privacy and Electronic and Communication Regulations 2003, known as PECR.  The principle of the DPA that we are most interested in here, is that any information must be processed in line with your rights.  Essentially, when you give any personal details to any organisation, they should explain to you the reason why they need your information, and what they will use it for. 

Taking an example: you sign-up for a new energy provider.  Clearly they need your name and address so that they can send a bill to you.  Maybe they need your telephone number to discuss customer service issues, and/or email address as a quick and efficient means to let you know of changes to the service they provide to you.  When you sign on the dotted line, you will be signing-up to the small print that they can store your data and use it in the ways described.  If the organization would like to use your data for marketing purposes, they have make that clear to you when you sign (or equivalent ‘click’ online).  Aside from ‘marketing purposes’, the company’s small print may allow them to pass your information to ‘carefully selected third parties, to advise of products or services…’ If they don’t mention third parties, they cannot give your data to any other organization, except after first gaining your consent.

Opting Out of Marketing

Good practice within the marketing industry says that you should give the customer the opportunity - at the point of application – to opt out of their data being used for marketing purposes (or given to third parties).  But, the company is not obliged to put a tick box on an application form or their website.  There is also no stipulation about whether ticking  a box means that you are allowing or refusing.  Always read the small print carefully.  As an alternative to the tick box, the small print may stipulate that you have to write to the company at any time to request that they do not process your personal data for the purposes of marketing, or giving to third parties for marketing purposes. Some companies have tick boxes, and some do not.  Some will hide away in the small print about passing your data to third parties, and others will have an additional tick box for your opt out of that aspect, if you choose to do so.  Remember, we are talking here about companies for whom you are a customer.

Breaches of Data Protection Principles

Any company that processes your data for marketing purposes or uses your data for a purpose that they have not made clear to you when you signed-up, could be liable to sanctions from the Information Commissioner (ICO), and ultimately a criminal offence could be committed.  The chances of any breach turning into a criminal matter is small, as the sanctions that the ICO have available these days are far reaching, and there have been many examples within the last few years of organizations failing to adhere to the eight DPA principles, leading to huge fines.  Principally, ‘losing data’ has been a common one, see this BBC new article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11070217.  (The DPA principle at failure here is that the company did not keep personal data secure.)  To turn criminal, the organization would have to repeatedly breach DPA principles.

Marketing Preference Lists

We now get into the area of marketing preference lists, and the question of whether adding yourself to such will prevent unwanted contact with organizations trying to sell things to you.  The answer to that question is not quite so straightforward!  The two main lists I’ll talk about here, are the Mailing Preference Service (MPS), and the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), which are run by the Direct Marking Association through MPS Online, http://www.mpsonline.org.uk and TPS Online http://www.tpsonline.org.uk

If a company has your personal data legally (i.e. you gave it to them in the course of being a customer, or quote to be a customer) and they are using it for a purpose that you allowed them to do so, (i.e. marketing), then they have no obligation to remove your name from their list if you have registered with the MPS or TPS.  This is because you have allowed the company to use your data for marketing purposes.  However, there are two further reasons why a company may remove your name, being: it’s industry best practice to do so, and you are less likely to buy whatever they are selling in the letter/call if you are on MPS/TPS, so the company will save money by not writing to you. 

Where you are not a customer and have never been a customer of the organization contacting you, the situation is different.  The provision that the company must have obtained your data legally does not change, but if they want to phone you, they must remove you from the list if you are registered with TPS.  This is a legal requirement.  If that company would like to write to you, they have to remove you if you are registered on MPS, which is a requirement of British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing, as administered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).  Whilst not a legal requirement to remove from a mailing an MPS registered individual, the company could land themselves in hot water with the ASA if they do not.

Where you are not a customer...

Aside from organisations from which you have bought products and services and would consider yourself a customer, there are other times that we, as members of society hand over our personal data to others.  Examples of this include completing a survey, or prize draw form, which in many cases are in themselves a means by which to collect personal data from people, for use in marketing.  If you give your personal details, and do not opt out of marketing, either at the time or later by writing to the company, that company can legitimately use your personal data to the extent provided for when you signed a form when giving the data, which most likely includes providing your data to third party companies, i.e. they can sell your data to other companies, which is what funds the prize draw!   The best advice here is to be wary of giving your details in such situations, make a note of the company to whom you are giving your details, and read the small print!

Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations

The PECR regulations cover email, text messages and automated telephone calls.  If you are not a customer of the company wishing to contact you by email, text or recorded telephone message, that company must have your prior consent to do so, which is referred to as being ‘opted-in’ to electronic communication.  The usual means of obtaining consent is by a tick box, ‘tick here if you want us to contact you….’  .  Poorly targeted bulk spam emails fall into this category, but unfortunately, many spam emails originate from shores far away, and thus escape the legislation. Don’t forget though, if you are a customer of an organization, they can legitimately contact you electronically until you withdraw your consent by writing to them to ask that they do not use your data for marketing purposes.

Marketing Purposes

To further complicate things, the definition of ‘marketing purposes’ is less than clear and it is sometimes open to interpretation.  If a piece of communication looks like marketing, e.g. it’s shiny or glossy, contains a promotional offer, such as ‘20% off’, then it probably is marketing for the purposes of using your data and Data Protection legislation.  However, where it becomes a grey area, is where the company wants to make you aware of a service that is linked to the product or service that you already have from that company.  If a letter was a ‘plain letter’, without any promotion or glossy feel look, the legal guidance would most likely be that such communication is part of the service to you as a customer to make you aware of the linked product, and as such any marketing permission could be overridden.  An example of this could be your bank or credit card company making you aware of an identity protection product.  Failure to write to you may leave you more exposed to fraudulent activity on your account and later complaints that they did not tell you about a mitigating product.

Silent Calls

Tele-marketing operations sometimes result in what is referred to as silent calls.  This is where the consumer picks up the phone, and there is a momentary delay before someone talks to you, and these are the situations that are most troubling to older people.  The delay is caused because it is often a computer that dials you rather than an human pressing buttons on a phone.  Computers are used because they can dial much quicker, and when there's no reply they just move to the next number.   In this way they can get through a list of number hundreds of times quicker than any human.  Once the computer gets an answer from a consumer, it needs to pass that call to an operator.  If the call centre is well run, they will have an operator available to talk to you, meaning that the delay will be barely noticeable.  However, when they get things wrong and the computer connects more calls than there are operators to take those calls, that's when there is a long delay before anyone speaks to you, or sometimes the call is ended by the computer after a few seconds if no operator becomes available.  

There are strict guidelines that tele-marketing companies must follow, which minimise the potential for them making silent calls.  Ofcom welcome people to contact them to make complaints; use this link.

Summary

As you can see, it’s a complicated area, and the Direct Marketing Association strive to maintain standards.  Most companies are clued up to the laws and regulations and do not want to phone or write to you if you take objection to junk mail and tele-marketing.  However, it is my view that most individuals are unaware of the rules and regulations and are thus unable to stop their data being used for marketing purposes.

Some unscrupulous companies will flout the rules and there is nothing you can do to stop some unwanted calls or mail, other than make a formal complaint to the ICO, MPS, TPS or Ofcom when it happens.

Some useful links

Information Commissioner's Office

TPS online 

MPS online 

Direct Marketing Association 
Ofcom

The small print: 

• the information provided based on first-hand knowledge of the industry.  However, it is without warranty.  
• E&OE
• You cannot reproduce this text in part of whole without first seeking my permission LeicsBobby@gmail.com

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Happy New Year!

On a normal Friday or Saturday the 22:15 hrs briefing at Euston Street is for Op Newfields, which is the City Centre operation to keep the streets as safe as possible for people to enjoy their well earned night out and to minimise the chances of them becoming victims of crime. The Op runs every Friday and Saturday throughout the year, and at the time of this story, was a 22:00 briefing at Mansfield House police station and drew a contingent of officers from each of the six Local Policing Units into the City to assist with the policing operation of the night time economy of the city.  The following story is from a few years ago.


Today was no ordinary weekend evening, it was New Year’s Eve, and the briefing room was packed with barely space to stand. The briefing Sgt reminded us to deal with potentially violent situations as early in the evening as possible, with use of Section 27 powers where appropriate to remove potential troublemakers from the City Centre. The Inspector, referred to as the OCI, reinforced the message to deal with potential trouble quickly.


I was crewed with Sally, which was good news as we had worked well together in the past. We were posted out on foot and our brief was to look after the area between Market Place and Market Street, which included Lloyd’s Bar - a busy place and at risk of trouble due to volume of customers alone. We were in position at the Market opposite Lloyds by about 22:45 hrs, and it was cold. Very cold in fact! The staff at Lloyds were great and looked after us by bringing out hot drinks a couple of times. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits.


At about ten to midnight, a member of the public walked past us and said "you better get over there, a woman is being beaten up”. He pointed and we rushed over, to find a woman lying on the floor lying in the foetal position, clutching the area of her abdomen, with a male aged in his late forties standing over her. I did not see him kick her, but from what we had been told and the position in which we found the woman, the suspicion was that he had assaulted her. I moved him away from the woman, who by this time had told Sally that her name was May, and of a similar age to Walter. I moved  Walter away from May and asked him to stand against the shop window. It was fairly obvious that both people had been drinking, but it was New Year’s Eve! We were on Market place, which is the road that runs from Hotel Street to Cheapside, with the market on the right.


Walter was compliant, but we clearly needed to speak to him formally about what would seem to have taken place. Normal procedure would be to arrest a suspect, then obtain a statement from the victim, in this case May. Sally explained to  Walter that we needed to ‘talk’ with him, and at that point she applied handcuffs and secured his wrists to the front of his body, thus preventing any further injury to May or potential injury to ourselves. Sally the formally arrested Walter on suspicion of assaulting May tonight. At this point  Walter seemed to wake up to what was happening. He had just been arrested, and did not like that! He made an allegation that May had assaulted him, and to be fair there was a small amount of blood on his forehead. I tried to keep him as calm as possible.


Sally got on the radio and requested a van to transport  Walter to Euston Street custody suite, aka ‘the cells’, and within minutes one had arrived.  Again, normal procedure would be to put the prisoner in the back of the van and go with him to custody suite, but  Walter had other plans. Let’s just say that he started to kick-off, big time! There were by now four officers at the scene, and Walter decided that he wanted to fight us, so he had to be taken to the floor to restrict the possibility of him kicking, spitting or otherwise assaulting officers. Sally pressed her emergency button on her Airwave terminal (aka radio), to summon for urgent assistance. Once an emergency button, or ‘code zero’ is put out, every radio on that channel will emit an audible and distinctive tone that officers do not like to hear frequently, as it either means that a fellow officer is in immediate need of assistance, or a suspect is running away. In this case we needed back-up, and within a minute or so, two further officers arrived.


Walter continued to kick and twist, making it difficult for him to be restrained. Police helmets had fallen off by this stage, and I later found that the shiny badge on the front of my mine had broken away, leaving me badge-less for the rest of the night. I shouted on the radio some ‘fast raps’ restraints. Within a couple of minutes a van from the Tactical Support Group, or TSG, had arrived to deliver straps. The sliding door of the TSG van opened and an officer leaned towards me, but he paused, then looked at his watch, looked at me and smiled, and said “Happy New Year!” It had just turned midnight. Still, there was no time for a toast or a rendition of Auld Lang Syne. We had Walter to deal with. I quickly took the straps with a reciprocal greeting, and with six officers now present, we applied the straps and despite his initial unwillingness, we got  Walter into the back of the van. The internal ‘cage’ door was closed, but before we had chance to close the outer van door,  Walter decided not to go without further fight. He started to head-butt the grill. Hard. What an idiot, I thought. But, we have a duty of care to prevent idiots too from harming themselves. The internal door was opened and Walter warned that his continued behaviour would result in being sprayed. He continued to head-butt the van, so a colleague shouted for me to get out of the way whilst he sprayed  Walter in the face with Captor spray.  That took the fight out of him and he became calm, though now verbally complaining that his eyes hurt.


After all of the frantic activity of the last few minutes, Sally and I turned round to speak with May. She had disappeared! We needed a statement from her, but that wasn’t going to happen for the time being. We transported Walter to the custody suite, then were under instruction to get back out into the city. The rest of the evening was busy, attending the aftermath of a couple of fights and assisting other officers, but there were no more arrests for us.


The revelling had died down by about 04:00, so it was back to Mansfield House to do a crime report and statements etc for  Walter before we could finish. I think we got away and back to our local nick at about 07:00. Whilst doing the paperwork I heard over the radio that Walter had become ill and required an ambulance to take him to A&E. Two officers would have had to go with him and stay with him for his time in hospital, known as a ‘bed watch’. Another unseen police resource eater...


I understand that no further action was taken against  Walter, as May decided that she did not want to make a statement, there were no other witnesses and CCTV had no coverage of what happened.  That's what happens sometimes, but we did the right thing by arresting him.




Notes
*Most officers who duty on Newfields are now based centrally at Euston Street police station, which is the City response hub. 
*Section 27 – is a quick way to get people out of the city who are likely to cause trouble because of their presence in an area where alcohol is involved. People served with a s27 notice have a set period of time, normally 10 minutes, to leave the city centre and not return within 24 hours. If they fail to leave, they can be arrested and charged with failure to disperse, which results in a night in a cell and normally a fine of a few hundred pounds.
*The astute of you will notice that ‘fast raps’ have again been used in this episode. They really are used infrequently, which is can be more than said for their appearance in this blog thus far!
*Captor spray is like pepper spray. Read more here.

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Detained under the Mental Health Act

The call came out on the radio requesting 'fast raps' to be taken to the hospital, as a female who had earlier been detained by police under s136 of the Mental Heath Act, was becoming agitated and posing a risk to herself, officers and nursing staff.  The radio controller asked for the urgency, with the officer responding “sooner rather than later”.  We found a set in the car so went to assist.

Upon arrival we found officers in a side room in A&E with the detained person, Andrea.  Two officers had detained Andrea, the other two, like us, were delivering fast raps for restraint.  Andrea was sitting on the floor and her face and forearms covered in blood.  I couldn't at first see any injuries as I remained outside the room, passing a couple of  new pairs of medical gloves inside to officers as theirs split whilst wrangling with Andrea.  For a small lady, Andrea could kick around quite a bit and before too long I was inside helping to restrain her and apply the restraints.

Fast raps are restraint straps, measuring about 8cm wide and a metre or more in length and are essentially double sided Velcro straps, furry on one side, sticky on the other.  If applied correctly, they are pretty effective.  Sometimes it's not possible to apply them perfectly as the detainee is usually kicking and wriggling around, which is of course why the straps tend are used.  Straps are not applied as a matter of routine, and they are reserved for the exceptional situations where the detainee is a serious risk of harming themselves, officers or others.  We are trained to use them.

A strap was applied to Andrea’s lower calf area, thighs and a final one across her chest, encompassing arms so that she could not access the two gaping lateral lacerations on her left wrist.  One cut was deep for that part of the body; the deepest I had seen.  It had to be half a centimeter deep by about 5cm wide, with the second, less serious being the same width but maybe only 1-2 mm deep.  The main cut itself was no longer bleeding but can imagine it releasing a fair amount of blood earlier, which is no doubt where the blood on her face and arms came from.

Andrea was distressed.  She wanted a cigarette and kept asking for such.  Clearly she was in no fit state to leave the hospital, and she couldn’t have one where she was.  Maybe that would have calmed her down, but it’s not something that could have been considered.  Whilst I was outside the room, I heard an officer exclaim “she’s fitting”, and I observed a few seconds of what appeared to be an epileptic seizure.  Officers took the correct steps and did not restrain during her few seconds of fitting.  Nursing staff attended.

Section 136 of the Mental Health Act allows police to detain someone where they: are in public; would appear to have a mental illness; need to be removed to a place of safety for protection of themselves, officers or other people.  The DirectGov website has some good info in this respecthttp://www.direct.gov.uk/en/DisabledPeople/RightsAndObligations/Police/DG_4018603. 

Between moments of being calm, Andrea kicked and wriggled, but to little avail as she was now securely restrained.  We calmed her as best we could and sat her up so that she was as comfortable as possible.  She remained upset and she kept saying “I’ve done nothing wrong, why are police here?”  That made me think of the public perception of the police and perhaps how we are thought of as just arresting people or dealing with public order situations.  Maybe the uniform is synonymous with law and order, but in this situation the wellbeing of Andrea was our only concern.  Police have duty of care to preserve life and limb, and take an oath for such when becoming a constable.  Andrea was detained because she was, in the opinion of attending officers, about to harm herself.  The reality police TV shows these days concentrate all too much on the ‘action’ side of policing, and not the side that we were dealing with.  That’s another story through…

During her pleading for a cigarette, Andrea told us that she was bi-polar and couldn’t help how she was.  Her forearms arms were littered with scars of historic self harm injuries; there must have been hundreds of healed razor cuts.  A nurse attended, who addressed Andrea by her first name and told us that she had dealt with her before.  The nurse clearly had many years of experience, as she dealt with Andrea so well.  Andrea refused a local anesthetic and requested the use of steri strips to close the wound.  Even I could see that steri strips would be of little use keeping it closed, and the nurse advised such, with the only option being to stitch it closed.  I’ve never seen the act of stitching skin together.  The nurse again demonstrated her expertise and within a few minutes had closed the wound with five stitches, with Andrea’s hand and forearm being held steady by one of the attending officers.  What a skill. I was mesmerized. The final patching-up was to apply a dressing to the wound.

By this time a van had been called for to transport Andrea from A&E to another hospital, in which is the official place of safety for people detained under mental health legislation once appropriate A&E input is completed.  It arrived after a few minutes and we walked Andrea to the waiting van, and after a small bout of reluctance, she got in for onward transportation to the place of safety and further assessment.

That was the end of the input from myself and crewmate, so we became available for the next job…

I would say that detaining someone under 136 is one of the least liked jobs for officers.  I’ve been involved with a few and most are not in as bad a way as Andrea.  However, once detained two officers have to stay with the detained person until they have been assessed by a mental health professional, social worker and the police doctor.  At night, that process can take hours to complete, meaning that there are two fewer officers ‘on the street’ than there would have been normally.  Despite officers not being fans of the slow process, which involves doing very little for a long time, they are professional and know that the detained person is vulnerable and requires help, whether they reaslise that or not.  Putting the TV cameras in most s136 situations would make for dull viewing, but this is one of the important unseen roles of the police.


PS Andrea was not her real name

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