Spam Under Legislative Attack in Europe

Anonymous Coward writes: "CNN has an article in their Science and Technology section detailing how the European telecommunication ministers have agreed that unsolicited e-mail and wireless text messages should be prohibited under a new data protection law. They also are agreeing to allow leeway for law enforcement to access logs of e-mail and telephone traffic.

Comments

Somewhat normal

[quartz]

In a place where Internet traffic is priced by the megabyte or minute and SMS service by the message, I would imagine the motivation to eliminate spam is a little bit higher than in the country of flat rates.

Asia

[Detritus]

Most of the spam that I receive is coming from China and South Korea. I don't think legislation will help much. I would rather see them BGP'd to /dev/null.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Most places already have laws on phone solicitation. Telemarketers have to maintain a do-not-call list, and have to put you on it when you ask them to (they also have to tell you the name of their company). They can't call cell phones or fax machines, they can only call during certain times of the day, they can't use auto-dialers with pre-recorded messages, etc.

Similar laws on spam would probably be helpful. For example, requiring spammers to keep a do-not-mail list, and making it illegal to forge headers, take advantage of open relays, or send messages to cell phones/pagers.

Re:fax spammers suck

[jsmthng]

I'm 76% sure there's a U.S. law against fax spam, because it gets the bonus of specifically causing real-life monetary damage (in this case, waste of paper and ink, especially when fax paper was a big deal Back in the Day; email really is just electronic bits with the occasional per-minute cost).

Ha, google gets me a random attorney's page on the subject: http://www.markwelch.com/faxlaw.htm

You get $500 per violation. Woo.

Re:I don't get it

[sam_handelman]

The right honorable Mr. Coward wrote:
Phone solicitation is soooo much more annoying. Why don't people enact laws against that.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act was signed by George Sr. in 1991. The link also has some cute advice about how the law applies to you.

Of course, this is in the states - I don't know where Mr. Coward is from.

Anyway, the FCC/FTC/DOJ/park service etc. periodically come by and close down a telemarketer, but it is pretty much for show, and in every case the telemarketer has actually been charged with fraud, not with calling people who've been asked to have their numbers removed. In general, it being the law anyway, telemarketers will take your # off if you ask (unlike spammers.)

Apples, oranges.

[McDutchie]

The Great Firewall of China is intended to prohibit people from actively seeking out information they want.

Anti-spam legislation is intended to allow people to stop receiving information (?) they don't want.

This is not about control of the Internet. This is about control of my e-mail inbox, the one I pay for.

Re:Apples, oranges.

[sweetooth]

With a Radio you only tune into the station you want, and then "recieve" the information that they send, even if you don't want it all.

With email you don't have an option to tune everyone but the station you want out. You can do this somewhat with mail filters etc, but not to the same magnitude.

Also, radio is regulated quite heavily when compared with email.

Re:Real problem targeting spam

[ShaunC]

>Therefore, shutting down the "spammer" isn't going to do anything.

You're right - in those cases, to hell with the spammer, you have to go after the spamvertised product. Spammers spam because people are paying them to spam. People are paying spammers to spam because those people are making money off the spam. To borrow a Bush tactic, follow the money. If you're getting spam from Asia, Russia etc. advertising a website in the US (as I frequently do), forget tracking down the spammer unless you really want to spend the time doing so. Instead, forward the spam to the webhost of the target site, and the host of any email dropboxes contained within the spam.

It costs money to open webhosting accounts, so hit the real spammers (those who benefit from the advertising, not necessarily those who send the mail) in the pocketbook.

Shaun

Self help is more effective (slightly off topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

Some replies have already indicated how legislation in one jurisdiction may not be very effective in the jurisdiction-less world of the 'net.

I very rarely receive spam these days. This is my self-help tactic:

1. buy a domain name from a registrar that offers email aliases (this is inexpensive, 12euros from gandi.net, or US$15 from a few others). (i use gandi.net for registration and zoneedit.com for dns.)

2. set up an email address to forward to your normal ISP, or hotmail or whatever account. only give this address to trusted people.

3. set up a temporary spam email address (eg. temp1@yourdomain.com) and also forward it to your normal ISP/hotmail account. this is your 'public' address for web sites that require one. when you start getting spam, simply change it to temp2@yourdomain.com. no more spam.

at one stage i had about 10 different addresses all forwarding to my ISP account - it's interesting to see how and where they get around. i used one in usenet and one for web sites - the usenet one seemed to generate more spam.

another advantage is that you can keep the same 'main' address when you switch ISP or employer.

make sure you never give out your real ISP address.

for US$10-15 per year i have found this to be a very cheap and very effective spam-busting solution. it's worth registering a domain just for the control over email addresses. the ability to simply 'kill' the email address that's getting the spam is great.

Re:fax spammers suck

[Lowca]

A little karma whoring going on:

Here is the junk fax law (47 USC 227). As jsmtng said, you could get at least $500 for each junk fax sent to you.