Nairobi — The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) has issued two penalty notices against Whitepath company limited and Regus Kenya for contravening data protection laws.
The companies will now be required to pay a fine of Sh5 million each.
For White Path, the penalty has been issued because the firm failed to comply with an ODPC's enforcement notice dated January 10, 2023.
In a statement, the ODPC noted that it has received close to 150 complaints against Whitepath alleging that their applications have accessed their mobile phone contacts and are sending unwarranted and unsolicited text messages to the said contacts.
"Additionally, the Whitepath staff have been harassing the complainants, and their contacts irregularly obtained from the complainant's phone books," the statement read.
The penalty on Regus Kenya is on basis of the firm being non-cooperative and failing to respond to a Notification of Complaint dated October 27, 2022, a reminder to the Notification of Complaint dated November 11, 2022, and an Enforcement Notice dated February 16, 2023.
The ODPC noted that the complaint against Regus alleged frequent spamming of automated improper information to the complainant despite attempts to make the respondent stop.
Speaking on the notices, the Data Commissioner Immaculate Kassait, MBS said, "Data protection is the responsibility of every data controller and processor and it must be the company's top priority whenever they collect, process, or store personal information."
"I challenge businesses to protect personal data by design and by default and cooperate with the ODPC to avoid penalties," she said.
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The ODPC has also issued an enforcement notice to Ecological Industries Limited due to non-cooperation with several notifications of a complaint launched on January 25, 2023 and a reminder on February 15, 2023 against them for publishing of a personal photo on a company catalog and calendar for marketing purposes.
"Failure to comply with the enforcement notice within the stipulated time, Ecological Industries Limited will be faced with a penalty notice," the ODPC said.
In March 2022, the Central Bank of Kenya introduced the Digital Credit Providers (DCP) Regulations in a bid to streamline the digital lending industry after numerous complaints about the misuse of data by digital lenders.
So far, only 22 digital lenders have been licensed with WhitePath missing from the list.
