The ePrivacy Regulations provide that individuals have the right to object to receiving electronic direct marketing and that a valid address to opt-out must be included with each marketing communication.

Where a person is purchasing a product or service, they must be given the right to object to the use of their details for direct marketing at the time those details are collected. A valid address for opting out must be included in every message subsequently sent to them. In practice, many organisations implement this by means of an unsubscribe link in an email, or a text short code which will automatically opt the person out of direct marketing when they send a stop request to a dedicated number.

It is a criminal offence to send electronic direct marketing communications to a person who has not consented to receiving such communications either by opt in consent or, in the case of an existing business relationship with the person, by means of an opt out.

Separately, Article 21 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives individuals the right to object at any time to processing of their personal data for the purposes of direct marketing, which includes profiling to the extent that it is related to direct marketing. Where an individual objects to processing for direct marketing purposes, their personal data must no longer be processed for those purposes.

Additionally, as noted above, if consent is relied upon to send direct marketing texts or emails then the individual recipient has the right to withdraw their consent at any time and it must be as easy to withdraw consent as it was to give it.