Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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It's not just limited penalties: it's also limited scope, in that the only spam prohibited is spam to personal addresses. I actually get more spam to my work address than my personal addresses, and am rather unamused by this... cop-out. ("Loophole" isn't quite the right word, because it's intentional).
"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.
And this compares to the highly successful anti-spam laws of which country, exactly? (Disclaimer: I have a vested interest, I the anti-spam development manager at MessageLabs)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Laws are useless unless they are enforced. There is no deterrent if would-be lawbreakers know they either won't get caught, or if caught, won't be significantly punished.
It's therefore relevant in planning anti-Spam legislation that the legislators consider how they can follow up on whatever laws they draft to make them more than a 'toothless tiger'.
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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.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
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
Business Voyeur
In The Netherlands, you can report spam on-line as well at the Spam Klacht (lit.: "spam complaint") website. This is an official website of the OPTA organization, which monitors and control telecommication in The Netherlands. Note that the link to the Spam Klacht website is even an SSL link.
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It's quite amusing that while on the one hand expecting ISPs to keep e-mail logs for several years for "security" purposes, another branch of the same government is ensuring that those logs are so full of spam-related noise that it would be infeasible to analyse them in most practical cases.
Of course, anti-spam legislation is only effective against "legitimate" slimeball businesses. And at present, their contribution is minimal compared to criminal slimeball businesses. The latter cannot only be addressed by technical fixes, after which point legal solutions may have a chance of working.
The sad thing is that however strong and well supported the laws are by the community, it's probably not going to make one bit of difference to the amount of crap an individual receives. For a start, UK laws can't stop foreign spammers. Secondly, they are likely to be difficult to enforce even if we know who the culprits are. We have drug laws and anti-terrorism laws in Britain, but does that mean that they are no longer a problem? I think not. IMHO the best way to avoid spam is to take precautions and get some good filters.
You've probably noticed that people's noses get bigger as they get older. That's because old people are huge liars.
> 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?
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
That is, when some story comes up about spam and a govt. official is interviewed, they can point to the spam law being passed.
See also Data Protection Act, Freedom of Information Act.
As for the site, it says nothing about the Reg 22 in question
Here's the Information Commissioner's Guidance on Regulation 22 (you have to scroll down to p.24 of the pdf). What, you expected something accessible from that bunch of clowns? Think again...
If it's the one I think it is, it's part of an EU directive. There's details of it here, the chapter relevant to spam is here , albeit in .doc format.
I've only had a chance to skim but the legislation seems to be mostly aimed at legitimate businesses who have over-zealous customer newsletter runs, rather than preventing mass mailing spammers.
I have to say, though, that the form linked in the article is completely asinine.
Is a paper tiger. It was designed that way. You only really find this out when you try to invoke the Data Protection Act 1998 against a data conroller company, and find that it's not designed to protect you, it's designed to safeguard companies holding your data from you.
The reason the UK spam laws are weak is not a coincidence either. The UK government uses the electoral register to sell your data (regardless of whether you "opt out") to third party marketing companies to get revenue.
It's not freedom of information as you might know it, it's a case of "do as I say, not as I do".
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Therein lies your first lesson in international law - how to implement a European Union directive in such a way as to follow the letter of the law but with no real intention to do anything serious about the problem the Directive is supposed to be addressing.
British politicians and lawmakers are just like politicans anywhere - totally cynical bastards with their own agendas.
We need a new, pithy name for these. Getting people to sign up to receive spam is one of the spammers' cleverest tricks. And it works too well, alas.
Yes, but do you have No Tea?
Otherwise, you can never get the last bit of fluff....
www.eFax.com are spammers