Outlawing spam

The UK takes further steps to combat spam next week by enforcing new legislation that will see offenders being hit with fines of up to £5,000 for each breach.

The new law - which comes into force on December 11 - is, though, unlikely to have a major impact on tsunami-like inbox spam levels since most spam is generated from outwith the EU. However, it does have significant implications for UK companies and how they market products and services by email.

As some of the world’s most prolific spammers sun themselves in Florida apparently immune to the best efforts of Federal authorities to close them down, the world suffers chronic email constipation.

The latest figures reveal that spam now accounts for more than half of all email sent every day. To flush email inboxes of spam, it is estimated that each employee now spends six minutes every day deleting unsolicited messages. That’s half an hour each week - or around 24 hours annually. And time is money. A company employing 500 people could be losing around £3,300 a month in lost productivity.

The UK’s tougher stance on spam, meanwhile, has drawn criticism from some who reckon it isn’t far reaching enough and contains important loopholes. Under the updated legislation, fines of up to £5000 can be imposed on companies and individuals caught sending unsolicited commercial email and SMS (short messaging service) text messages to mobile phones.

But the snag is that the legislation applies only to spam sent to individuals over personal accounts and not company email accounts. Business to business spam, then, appears to still have free rein. The letter of the law, if maybe not the spirit or good business sense would dictate, is that it is still okay to spam business clients.

The All-Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG), meanwhile, are advocating, among other measures, that Internet Service Providers develop blocklists of spammers and mechanisms for the release of statistical information to assess the level of damage being done by particular spammers.

Whether UK or European Union legislation has a noticeable effect on the volume of spam remains to be seen. Blocklists will ultimately only counteract the symptoms, not remedy the cause of the spam which is a world wide problem.

Legal measures in the UK and European Union have, on a planet-wide scale, limited jurisdiction. The vast majority of spam originates in the US, Southeast Asia and South America, outwith the reach of the UK and EU.

To further complicate matters, there is a fundamental split between Europe and the US on how email marketing should be conducted. Europe favours “opt in” whereby prior consent would be required to legally send marketing material by email. The US, though, is leaning more towards “opt out” where the onus is on individuals to inform companies they do not wish to receive spam.