Slashdot Mirror
UK Spam Controlled by UK's Advertising Standards Agency
Goth Biker Babe writes "The Advertising Standards Agency in the UK has outlined new rules which govern text advertisements including SMS spam, e-mail spam, and web pop-ups according to the BBC.
All unsolicited advertising must now clearly identify itself as advertising. This is as a direct result of the number of complaints about junk texts, e-mail and web pop-ups. All thought the article doesn't mention it a BBC news report this morning stated that unsolicited advertising must now be opt-in rather than opt-out."
The ASA guidelines are voluntary not statutory, they're an industry body that has no legal power, the most they can do is pass a complaint over to Dept Trade & Industry when serious illegality has occured.
Apparently the ASA had a massive increase in complaints regarding mobile txt messages, they went tenfold... from 6 to 60 complaints in a year! Anyway, by June I suspect not a single spam will enter my inbox... errr, right.
Probally the main reason it doesn't mention that it needs to be Opt-In is because of EU Privacy rules, all unsolicted advertising is supposed to be Opt-In.
All forms have to be written that you proactively allow sharing of your information, if you don't expressily give your consent, your information cannot be shared.
The US could learn a lot from EU Privacy Laws.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
I agree its not going to stop email spam, but I think this is more aimed at text spam to mobile phones, companies are sending out spam texts to people and when they reply they send to premium rate phone numbers costing 50pence/ £1 a minute as these are uk numbers they will hopefully be able to reduce the amount of people - especially children replying to them and more companies like this one http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2223504.stm will get fined large amounts
It's a start. Spam is an international problem, and there is no chance that Korea or even US spammers are going to pay any attention to the ASA.
But it is a start. About 5% of my spam is clearly UK based, companies offering to reduce my phone bill, or grey box PCs for 200 quid etc. Hopefully I can now stop this small percentage getting through.
Bear in mind this is also for mobile text spam, which while not currently a massive problem, if not nipped in the bud could become a worse problem than email spam. Hopefully we'll see the ASA dishing out 50 grand fines , the US will see profit this gives the government and follow suit.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
If you're interested, I now use a spam filter which works pretty good. It's a peer-to-peer filter, so the definitions you create for spam are shared across all users, and vice versa. Since I started using it, I've seen very little spam in my inbox. Unfortunately, I think it only plugs into outlook, but I'm not sure. Maybe somebody here can reverse engineer this baby and pump a new cross-client/platform net...
Here it is
Everyone get this wrong about Kanute. It is often assumed that he was a power crazy fool with a God complex. Quite the opposite. Kanute ordered the tide not to come in to prove to his people that he was just a man and the tide would pay no more attention to him than anyone else.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine