The Minister of Justice and Public Security, Anderson Torres, announced this Monday (18) the carrying out of an operation against the practice of abusive telemarketing that, according to him, should affect almost 180 companies in the sector.
According to a publication made by the head of Justice and Public Security on Twitter, the fines can reach R$ 13 million.
On Sunday, Torres had written, on the same social network that the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, through the National Consumer Secretariat and the 27 Procons, would carry out a major operation against what he considered “one of the biggest disturbances in the daily life of Brazilians”. : the abusive telemarketing”.
The precautionary measure is contained in an order published in this Monday’s edition of the “Official Federal Gazette”, which determines the suspension of telemarketing services of 31 companies and entities linked to the financial and banking system and to the telephone companies.
The publication considers the “contact with the customer to offer products or services without the prior consent of the consumer, which can only be approached by telephone if they have expressly expressed an interest in this regard.”
The precautionary measure provides for a daily fine of R$ 1,000 in case of non-compliance. The publication by the Ministry of Justice and Public Security says that the ban does not affect other forms of approaches, such as collections or requests for donations.
According to the Ministry of Justice, the approaches are mostly carried out with data obtained illegally.
Between 2019 and 2022, Sindec (National Consumer Defense Information System) registered 14,547 complaints related to telemarketing calls.
Also according to the Ministry of Justice, Senacon (National Consumer Secretariat) analyzed the complaints and concluded that the data used by companies for the practice of telemarketing were not provided by consumers or passed on to them from an existing legal basis. Which raised indications of the practice of illegal trade in personal data.
Mandatory use of prefix 0303
On June 8, the use of the 0303 prefix became mandatory in active telemarketing calls —for sales of products or services— made by landline. Since March, operators had already been forced to adopt the measure in cell phone calls.
The new standard was defined in December last year and aims to standardize the numbering and serve as a tool to help consumers identify telemarketing calls. With this, the customer decides whether or not to attend.
Also in June, on the 21st, Anatel (National Telecommunications Agency) withdrew the free calls of less than three seconds, continuing the offensive against abusive telemarketing.
The measure seeks to stop the growth of automatic calls, known as robocalls. These calls are made automatically by computers (robots) that make thousands of calls a day from the same number (generally not provided by operators).
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
