Emily Clark Consulting

Emily Clark Consulting are notorious online for spamming unsuspecting people with their endless job board-style emails. Their websites are emilyclarkconsulting.com and emilyclarkconsulting.co.uk. Emily Clark Consulting’s Trustpilot reviews page contains two types of review:

1. People who they’ve spammed
2. Reviews they’ve added themselves(!)

You can read the Emily Clark Consulting Trustpilot reviews here.

Update 2022

As of April 2022 EMILY CLARK CONSULTING LIMITED, company number 13023378, has been dissolved via compulsory strike-off by Companies House the UK Government body responsible for registering company information. Hopefully this will be followed-up by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Update 2023 - eccjobalerts.com

The ICO Number - ZA811793 - previously used by Emily Clarke Consulting has now appeared on the website of ECC Job Alerts⁽¹⁾. They appear to have had to rebrand due to all the complaints about their GDPR violations. A quick search of the ICO database of responsible data handlers shows this number is no longer active⁽²⁾.

Emily Clark Consulting spam

My experience with Emily Clark Consulting was no different to many of the negative reviews on the Trustpilot website.

For over a week, I had been getting unsolicited email marketing from emilyclarkconsulting.com.

The emails were coming through daily, just lists of jobs with links off to partnerships with other recruitment companies.

I was able to get in contact with Emily Clark Consulting by replying to one of the emails. As is standard I wanted to find out where they got my information and why I was receiving unsolicited emails.

Unusually, I was able to get an answer and Emily Clark Consulting were happy to confirm that they simply gather email addresses off the internet and include them in their spam lists.

Emily Clark Consulting Spam

They’ll literally email anyone. No opt-in. No pre-existing relationship.

This is not how email marketing should be carried out, not by a reputable company. The Information Commissioner’s office outlines how and why a company should contact you. ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/online/spam-emails

WIX

The website is hosted and managed through the WIX website content management system, I’ll check with them if they are aware their system is being used to send spam, if they care, and if they’ll take steps to stop it. The WIX website makes clear that emails should only be sent to people who have given express consent to receive them.

Currently waiting to hear back.

JobLeads

The spam coming from Emily Clark Consulting is unusual in that it doesn’t link back directly to the spammer’s website, instead the emails include a batch of links back to other websites. In this case, the websites are all recruitment websites with which Emily Clark Consulting has a referral partnership.

I was able to get in contact with one of the companies JobLeads GmbH. They were able to confirm that Emily Clark Consulting was being paid for the referrals from the unsolicited emails they were pumping out into unsuspecting inboxes.

The support staff at JobLeads GmbH were very helpful and proactive in making sure my email was removed from the list. I’m still waiting on the emails to stop, I’ll update when they do.

ICO Complaint

The rules on electronic mail marketing are in regulation 22. In short, you must not send electronic mail marketing to individuals, unless:

• they have specifically consented to electronic mail from you; or
• they are an existing customer who bought (or negotiated to buy) a similar product or service from you in the past, and you gave them a simple way to opt out both when you first collected their details and in every message you have sent.

You must not disguise or conceal your identity, and you must provide a valid contact address so they can opt out or unsubscribe.

A complaint has been lodged with the Information Commissioner’s Office, and I’m holding out hope that contact with the company and its partners today have put a stop to any future spam.

Update

So far, fingers crossed, no email from Emily Clark Consulting today. I’ve also recieved a follow-up from JobLeads. They are re-evaluating some of their partnerships including Emily Clark Consulting and will bring up my concerns.

(I took a pass on the JobLeads membership offer)

The hosting company, WIX, hasn’t got back to me yet. I’ll update when they do.

Hopefully this’ll make a (small) dent in someone else’s inbox.

A lot of other people are having the same trouble - there’s a raft of bad reviews on Trustpilot reguarding the use of unsolicited email marketing by Emily Clark Consulting.

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