UK Anti-Spam Laws Criticised

stripyd writes "The Guardian has an article about the ineffectiveness of British anti-spam regulations. Asside from the limited penalties, the Office of the Information Commissioner have yet to actually hand out a fine. From personal experience, the OIC aren't good at answering email on queries regarding the law, their web site, or suggestions that the current procedure of tracking down, printing out and mailing off (with a stamp!) a five-page pdf form to report miscreants be streamlined. The form itself is good for a few yuks, until you remember your taxes are paying for it to be outsourced to private sector hosting."

Comments

Better in Belgium

[Halo1]

Here we can mail spam sent by Belgians (or spamvertising Beglian website) to the economical inspection, and they do investigate (they even called me once for more information). Foreigners getting Belgian spam (not many of those, I guess) can report them as well, fwiw. Their address is inspec dot eco at mineco dot fgov dot be

Reason...

[vchoy]

"Asside from the limited penalties, the Office of the Information Commissioner have yet to actually hand out a fine."

Most of the spam offences are committed outside of the UK. I consider this a localised solution to a global problem.

British spam

[CdBee]

"Get your online next-day tea supplies here"
"How to understand Americans - get the guidebook!"
"Sizzling Shots of the Queen - Join today!"

It all gets rather too much at times.

More seriously, I'd say in the UK we have more trouble with semi-legitimate opt-out marketing than pure spam, almost all of which seems to come from the USA (yes, re earlier story, particularly Comcast and the baby-Bells)

There are so many sites in UK cyberspace geared towards getting email addresses for "free newsletters", and any club or association seems to want to send emails with a bare minimum of content and masses of advertising added. This I see as an attempt to legitimise spam, rather than mass-mailing, people are paying asociations and clubs to sell their products for them. Affiliate programs suck, and so many firms have been founded to do just this in the UK.

How many times must I tell them? I already have enough Tea.

Re:Death threats???

[Sv-Manowar]

People getting into the internet thinking there is easy money even after the boom, and spamming can be lucrative if done well. Its a risky game, but if some play it right the rewards are huge

Email queries to the OIC

[gilgongo]

> From personal experience, the OIC aren't good at
> answering email on queries regarding the law

My personal experience was going to their site to look for guidelines on the use of cookies and the collection of anonymous data. Finding lots of "guidelines" about stuff (which are basically extracts of legal documents it seems), but nothing that seemed relevant, I mailed them my question. Three weeks later I got a reply, which was at least relevant, if amazingly long and almost as confusing as the other stuff on their site that I couldn't undertand either.

They've got a hell of a long way to go in my opinion. During the trial of Ian Huntely, the police even admitted they were confused about the DPA! What hope is there for the rest of us?