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UK Spam Controlled by UK's Advertising Standards Agency

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the can-i-have-some-of-that dept.

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."

13 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. As if it will help. by Big+Mark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  2. Sounds good, but... by Dr.Enormous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

    1. Re:Sounds good, but... by GammaTau · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...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.

      I assume you are thinking of e-mail instead of SMS messages to cell phones. The SMS messages can be traced accurately enough and thus whatever punishments laws or regulations set, they can be enforced.

    2. Re:Sounds good, but... by MrFredBloggs · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "they're planning to enforce this how?"

      The ASA has no teeth. It's a self-regulatory body. If a member breaches it, they`ll be `told off` by the ASA, but there are no mandatory fines, and spammers will NOT ever be members of the - this is not a law.

      Nothing to see here.

  3. why would this reduce spam?? by in_ur_face · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "All unsolicited advertising must now clearly identify itself as advertising."

    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..

  4. Not going to help by jjhplus9 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  5. Great, but... by meringuoid · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ... a UK law will only affect spam sent by UK citizens. I don't get much of that. I see a whole hell of a lot of stuff from the US, and occasionally from China or Korea (not just from America _via_ China, but actually sent by the Chinese); hardly ever anything from Europe.

    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.
  6. ASA != Government by meringuoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  7. This is basically self-protection by Doctor+Hu · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The ASA is a trade association that draws up voluntary guidelines to be followed by companies who care about being seen to be 'responsible'. Enough people are now sufficiently irritated by the floods of unsolicited dreck that it's now in the interests of the major advertisers to scale back their use of the mechanism, so lo and behold the ASA comes up and says 'you shouldn't do that'.

    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.

  8. Not original, but correct.. by CmdrTostado · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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..

  9. Re:EU Regulations by Sheetrock · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Yours isn't the first comment I've seen mentioning the tidal wave of spam from the U.S., yet here in the middle of this great land I get spam coming from just about everywhere but America (and junk faxes 'from' the U.K. to boot.) Yet they all seem to use dollars too, or are pushing a pump-and-dump scheme with stocks on the NYSE/Nasdaq. Who would have thought spammers lie? :)

    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.




  10. uh-huh by Captain_Stupendous · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  11. Intentify as spam by broothal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    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.

    /Christian