Are companies allowed to send direct marketing via SMS to mobile phones?

According to the ethical rules, direct marketing of premium rate services to the phone may not occur without the customer’s explicit consent. However, marketing may occur when an established customer relationship exists. An established customer relationship exists, for example, when a person has made a purchase of services from a company. If you have ordered a premium rate service, such as a movie screening, from a company, there is thus an established customer relationship between you and the company. The company may then send direct advertising for its services to your mobile. An established customer relationship can normally not be considered to last more than a year. If you do not order any more services from the company, they may therefore not continue to send direct advertising to you if more than a year has passed since you last ordered a service from the company.

It is important that one can easily stop future direct marketing if one does not want any more of it. Therefore, each message should contain a link that the consumer can click on and thereby immediately opt out of future marketing.

One should be aware that many companies collect information about their customers, including their mobile numbers, and that the terms also include clauses that as a customer, one agrees that one’s information can be used for marketing measures of various kinds. If one does not want their mobile to receive marketing, one should therefore be cautious about providing information about their mobile number when, for example, filling out applications for membership in various shopping clubs that retail chains or companies selling services via the internet have.