{"id":607637,"date":"2026-04-15T03:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/607637\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T03:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:41:13","slug":"latitude-financial-fined-almost-4-million-for-breaching-australias-spam-laws-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/607637\/","title":{"rendered":"Latitude Financial fined almost $4 million for breaching Australia’s spam laws again"},"content":{"rendered":"

A financial services giant has been fined millions of dollars for a repeated breach of spam laws, including promoting credit cards without giving recipients a way to opt-out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Latitude Financial was forced to pay $3.96 million after the Australian Communications and Media Authority found it had broken the laws more than 2.7 million times, the regulator revealed on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The company sent more than 2.3 million spam messages between March 2024 and April 2025 which failed to include accurate contact information for the company as required by law.<\/p>\n

Of those messages, almost 345,000 also lacked a working unsubscribe function.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Latitude Financial provides\u00a0short-term loans, credit and travel cards, and buy now, pay later services. (ABC News: James Maasdorp)<\/p>\n

Latitude, which is the largest non-bank consumer finance company in Australia, was forced to pay a $1.5 million fine for similar breaches in 2022.<\/p>\n

Authority member Samantha Yorke said there was no excuse for Latitude’s repeated compliance failures, as reflected by the scale of the latest fine.<\/p>\n

“Latitude is now a two-time offender and it is disappointing that it let consumers down again,” Ms Yorke said.<\/p>\n

“The spam laws have been in place for more than 20 years, and there is simply no excuse for ongoing non-compliance, particularly after a prior enforcement action.”<\/p>\n

The messages, which promoted Latitude credit card products and financial services, told recipients they could reply “STOP” to unsubscribe, however in many circumstances the function simply did not work.<\/p>\n

Under Australian law, consumers must have the option to unsubscribe from commercial messaging, which must also provide accurate contact information for the sender.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The penalty was issued by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. (ABC News: Clarissa Thorpe)<\/p>\n

Latitude is now legally required to appoint an independent consultant to review its compliance with the spam laws and undertake regular and comprehensive reporting to the communications authority.<\/p>\n

“Given Latitude’s history of non-compliance, we will be very closely monitoring how it meets its obligations,” Ms Yorke said.<\/p>\n

In March 2023, Latitude was the target of a major cyber attack<\/a> in which the data of 7.9 million customers was stolen, including names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and driver’s licence numbers.<\/p>\n

Income and expense information for about 900,000 loan applications, including bank and credit card account details, was also stolen.<\/p>\n

A $1 million lawsuit brought against the company by an individual who claimed their information had reached the dark web after the breach was dismissed after a judge found it had little chance of succeeding.<\/p>\n

Latitude declined to comment ahead of the penalty being made public.<\/p>\n

AAP\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A financial services giant has been fined millions of dollars for a repeated breach of spam laws, including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16571,64,63,12459,99,438,17971,13634,66476,295591,90679,25494,65158,53552],"class_list":{"0":"post-607637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-acma","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-breach","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-company","14":"tag-credit-card","15":"tag-financial-services","16":"tag-fined","17":"tag-latitude","18":"tag-latitude-finance","19":"tag-laws","20":"tag-loans","21":"tag-spam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}