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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."
Most of the spam I get (as a UK resident) comes from the US. Get them to clean up their act and spam would be dead.
-Mark
...they're planning to enforce this how? Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think saying "don't spam" is going to mean much to the Nigerians who keep promising me untold riches. Still, I suppose you have to start somewhere.
so now i'll get spam which says that it is spam...will this reduce the amount i get? I guess now I can have better email filters, but I dont think it is a real solution to the problem..
I'd like to think it's a step forward in the fight against spam but I'm not sure quite how ...
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Less than 1% of the spam that hits hour servers is from a source inside the UK.
It is very hard indeed to imagine how this is going to help stem the flow of spam.
The restrictions on banner addvertising is going to be interesting in practice.
Anyone care to guesse how these regulations are going to be interpreted pragmatically?
How will it affect already shrinking banner advert revenues?
The only thing I see from British spammers is pyramid schemes and the guy on Blueyonder who keeps sending out virus mails. Hopefully they'll get whacked a bit harder now, which can only be a good thing :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
They're an industry self-regulatory body. This means that respectable advertisers won't spam, but mainsleaze was never the big problem. Pyramid frauds and penis pill salesmen don't care what the ASA says.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Mod the parent up!
Whenever I see yet another technical "fix" for spam I just wish that the USA would give it's citizens the right to own their data. EU citizens do - so we see spam coming from the USA and only a trickle from inside our own borders.
We could then push to close the rest of the world out - and really drop the volume of spam...
When are people going to stop offering me mortgages - in Dollars?
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
That is the serious difference between control on the SPAM level and trader level. ASA involvement can be on the trader level. This means that they may directly force the trader (if a UK) company to restrain from SPAM practices and they may also issue such a decision.
It is true that their decisions do not have the force of a legal act. But AFAIK there have been practically no cases in recent UK history for a company to try to disobey them.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The effects are likely to be marginal at best. Most large companies are smart enough not to irritate potential customers this way. The slimebrains that peddle Big Man and Easy Money snake-oil won't take any notice. Maybe it will have some effect on the armies of small companies that are competing to replace your windows with new! improved! double-glazed! fittings! - we can but hope.
I can't help being reminded that it was an early Anglo-saxon ruler, Kanute, who famously ordered the tide not to come in.
I may be missing some big point here, but how can unsolicited mail be opt in? If I've opted in to receive it, then it's not unsolicited, is it? Or have I _really_ not got something basic here? There's also a telephone preference scheme over here in the UK which means that you're not supposed to get called at home by advertisers or marketeers, but it seems to have made little or no difference to how many calls I get. I'm suspicious of how well this will work, the ASA doesn't really have much power anyway, but it would be nice. The problem, however, may just move overseas. Heck, most of the crap I get is from the US anyway, so this won't help.
If no-one responded to spam, there would be no market for the "service" and the industry would just dry up and blow away, some-one out there is replying to the junk. Where there is a demand, there will be a service. Don't reply to spam..
I don't like green eggs and spam Sam I am..
I've pushed the idea before and I will again that one (meaningful) country needs to set the standard of no spam on a national level and use a scheme of border router filters (in the literal sense!) on SMTP traffic to block everything except from/to pairs whitelisted by citizens and SMTP traffic from countries that meet the no-spam standards. I doubt the U.S. would be the first adopter and frankly don't care -- it'd be a good kick to the ass to get our representatives serious about fixing things if the E.U. implemented something like this.
There are an array of technical alternatives that could be strung together into a workable solution, but it involves an infrastructure update. I'm informed that this is about as likely to happen as the deployment of IPv6 and, therefore, am not holding my breath.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
How exactly does "unsolicited" work with "opt-in"? I thought unsolicited was "opt-out" by definition?
I am alone, yet I also surf the universal backwash of undifferentiated Being, which is LOVE.
Great, so now I can add a procmail filter to remove all mails beginning with [ADV] and voila - Bob's your uncle and I'm free of spam.
/Christian
Oh yeah - I also need to filter (adv)..and [AD]...and [-ad-]... and {A - D - V - E - E - R - T - I - S - M - E - N - T } and... well, you get my drift. The point is this:
Spam that identifies itself as spam is still spam, and I already know it's spam without a prefix. So what good is it?
With a standard prefix, Joe Luser can use his Outlook to filter the spam after it has been downloaded. Now, those who does that, wouldn't buy anything from spammers anyway. So the spammer doesn't care. To accomplish his return rate, he just sends out another million emails.. and another one.
There's only one law that will ever work. Don't send commercial email unless the receiver asked for it. All the other suggestions and implementations are just jumping through hoops.
I'm all for this. One thing about the article though:
If an email list is opt-in, then it's hardly unsolicited.
Follow me
In principle I like your ideas, but I see a very real flaw in the from/to pair whitelist concept. People sometimes want email from people who's from address they do not know. Let's say we meet at a convention, have a discussion about your ideas on spam blocking and I want to hear more. I give you my card which has my email address on it (an address for just that purpose). I write down your email address with the intention of adding it to my whitelist so that you can send to me. Then by the time I get back to the office, I've forgotten about you and fail to add you to my whitelist. Your email is rejected and I fail to get the information that I actually wanted from you! - Now imagine salespeople that hand out cards to potential clients (some international) so the client can at his or her discretion, contact them. The client may not wish to give a from address to the salesperson, but may wish to contact them at some later date. With your process, their email will be blocked and the company could/would loose business. The business community would not hold still for that, for long. Cause a man to loose money and you can be sure he will not be quiet about it. Enough of them yelling and governments notice, next thing you know, no matter how good the technology, how well intentioned the process, it will be forcibly removed.