Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

UK Makes Spamming a Fineable Offense

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-your-punish-on dept.

woodhouse writes "The BBC has an article about the new UK anti-spamming law which comes into force later this year. Under the new law, spammers can be fined up to 5000 pounds in a magistrates court, or an unlimited amount in the crown court. Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law."

11 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. spamhaus rebutts this claim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why the law won't work

    1. Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim by rokzy · · Score: 3, Informative

      both.

      one refers to people ("private individuals").

      the other refers to businesses.

    2. Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim by I8TheWorm · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because technology has yet to come up with a solution maybe?

      Technology is great, but abused technology doesn't seem to be able to fight for itself. How many people in the world actually like spam? The rest of us have been complaining for years about it. Spamblockers kind of work, but they don't completely solve the problem.

      Spam is a pretty specific term. From Mail-Abuse An electronic message is "spam" IF: (1) the recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (2) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent; AND (3) the transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to give a disproportionate benefit to the sender.

      How would this let the state control what goes in your inbox? Only unwanted messages. If something unsolicited yet important did make it to my inbox, I would probably treat it like the rest of the messages I get from unknown sources.. delete it. And I think most people do just the same.

      The bottom line is technology by itself seems to be helpless against it. Maybe laws will thwart some of the 120+ spam e-mails I get every day, allowing me to be more productive in my work.

      Now, regarding the loonies that think it should be a jailable offense...

      --
      Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
  2. register reports otherwise by deadmongrel · · Score: 4, Informative

    check out register.co.uk call it a toothless tiger. more like a pussy(oops!) read the article here http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/32914.html

  3. Don't hold your breath - need to see it in action by IIH · · Score: 4, Informative

    While it sounds great on the surface, just look at the corresponding fine for breaching the UK telephone do not call list - this is also up to 5,000, but no one has ever been fined despite 250 complaints a week being received over the past four years.

    --
    Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
  4. Right, but think about this... by msimm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Slashdot is a community full of people with drastically different ideas about absolutely everything. So don't be too surprised and remember, unlike piracy (a topic which includes an amazing amount of individual debates itself) spam impacts the average slashdot (and internet) user personally.

    --
    Quack, quack.
  5. Anti-spam needs more structure. by DuSTman31 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Personally, I think the main thing that would benefit the anti-spam cause now is more structure - in a software sense.

    There's already quite a few good, pretty effective techniques of filtering, but a truly best-case scenario would be arrived at using a combination of techniques.

    Look at the anti-spam tech available at the moment. There's filters that act as POP3 proxies, filters that run as a plug-in to a specific client (or built-in), and the odd mail server add-in. There's even the case of remote mailboxes (eg using IMAP) which is difficult to deal with any way apart from having the filter on the server.

    Spam filtering is best set-up on a client-by-client basis, because people tend to get different types of mail as normal. Also, if we're doing it on a client-by-client basis, end user interface is very important - any manual classification and configuration of such filters would be best done inside the user interface of the client software, in much the same way as client-specific plugins do it. To do this in a way consistent across client packages (necessary if we want to tackle the problem as a whole and not just for some people) would require a standard protocol for querying graphs of mail filters, relaying any corrections and reconfiguring said filter graph.

    I'd like to see a protocol built upon Seive (a language in RFC form for notating mail filtering rules) and a standard for mail filter components (standard COM/CORBA interfaces, whatever). The seive language could provide flexibly reconfigurable "plumbing" between the individual filters.

    Even if one only uses one filter under such a mechanism, there'd still be benefits from a standardised software interface and ability to control from within any mail client.

  6. BS alert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Someone needs to read things more carefully. I strongly suggest anyone who believes the original Slashdot posting to go read this on SpamHaus. It's fine to post a story, but it's worse to publish the opposite of what it really says.

  7. Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals by NerdSlayer · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not prison rape expert, but I found this to an interesting article here explaining a bit why this goes on as much as it does and why the authorities look the other way.

  8. Re:Don't hold your breath - need to see it in acti by Gnavpot · · Score: 2, Informative

    In Denmark, we have had an antispam law for 3 years, probably similar to the new UK law. And this law is actually enforced.

    Recently, a company named Fonn was fined by the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court for sending 156 spam emails to 50 recipients (including me). The fine was DKK 15000, which equals $2280 or GBP 1410 - or GBP 9 per email.

    English summary here: http://www.fs.dk/uk/misc/fonn.htm

    More cases are under preparation by the Danish Consumer Ombudsman, this time involving a lot more than 156 emails.

    Noone knows if future rulings will use the same fine amount per email. But some of us hope that they will. As one of the cases involves more than 50000 emails and SMS messages, this would result in a GBP 450000 fine.

  9. Re:How about a restraining order by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    Even the suspected author of one variant of the MS Blaster worm, Jeffrey Parson, was told by the judge that he could use the Internet to look for work. Judges are increasingly unwilling to place permanent draconian restrictions on computer criminals because that could leave them unemployable, and an unemployable person can be forced back into crime by that very fact.

    Unfortunately it looks like not all judges got that memo:

    Lamo denies $300,000 database hack

    Quoting from this article -

    After a weekend in hiding, Lamo turned himself in at the federal courthouse in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday morning. Pursuant to an agreement with prosecutors, he was quickly released on a $250,000 bond secured in part by his parent's house, but was banned from computers, ordered to obtain employment and placed on travel restrictions pending trial

    Note that the "no computers" restriction was tacked on by the judge, according to the previous Register article. Like you say this does make employment opportunities somewhat limited.

    ManxStef
    (posted as AC 'cause I've forgot my login and I'm on my sweet new Linux box - a Gigabyte TA-1)