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Digital lender Whitepath fined again for data privacy violation
Data Commissioner Immaculate Kassait delivering a speech at Vila Rosa Kempinski in Nairobi on November 19, 2024 during celebrations to mark 5 years of Kenya's Data Protection act
Mobile lender Whitepath has been ordered to pay a Sh250,000 compensation to Dennis Caleb Owuor for harassment in loan recovery efforts, with the firm being a repeat offender after it was found in another data breach two years ago.
Data Commissioner Immaculate Kassait says Whitepath remained unresponsive after claims were levelled, prompting her to conclude that the complaint remained undisputed.
The complaint was lodged last November with Mr Owuor claiming that the digital lender’s agent had called him multiple times regarding a loan that he had been listed as a guarantor without his consent.
According to Ms Kassait’s file, the complainant inquired how the agent had obtained his name and contact information, as well as sought to know why he was not notified during the loan application process to seek his consent before his personal data could be processed.
Owuor submitted that the agent failed to respond to any of the concerns, but instead instructed him to contact the defaulting loanee to repay the borrowings from Whitepath’s product known as Zuri cash.
Owuor would later to receive a flurry of calls from the agent despite his attempts to push back with warnings of lodging a formal complaint with ODPC.
“The respondents (Whitepath) were non-responsive and did not submit a response to the notification of complaint. Therefore, the allegations made in the complaint remain undisputed,” wrote Ms Kassait in her ruling.
The Data Commissioner notes that the lender violated Section 26(a) of the Data Protection Act which provides for the right to be informed of the use to which a subject’s personal data is to be put.
“The respondent failed to establish any lawful basis for processing the complainant’s data as he had not consented to be a guarantor, making the whole processing unlawful,” asserted Kassait.
“The respondent is hereby ordered to pay the complainant Sh250,000 as compensation.”
In April 2023, Whitepath was yet again caught up in another data breach storm after the ODPC said it had received close to 150 complaints from the lenders’ clients alleging that the firm was mining their phone contacts and sending them unsolicited messages.
At the time, the firm was slapped with a Sh5 million fine.
