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Jail for Selling Email Lists to Spammers

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the losing-the-key dept.

amigoro writes "UK will start jailing the people who trade in email addresses, or any other personal data. The current Data Protection Act only fines people who do that, but the money one can make from trading in personal information was far higher than the measly GBP 5000 one had to pay if caught. The new regulations will result in a two year prison sentence for violating the Act."

4 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Re:THE FALCONER! by Intron · · Score: 3, Informative

    Do you feel like your privacy has been violated if someone that already had your e-mail address sells/trades/gives it to someone else?
    -- yes

    what count as deliberately misusing it?
    -- any use other than the purpose for which I gave it to you

    Go after people spamming and not someone giving out an e-mail address.
    -- the people giving out the email address are just as guilty as the people sending spam

    --
    Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  2. Re:FROSTY PISTOLIERS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    There's one problem: in UK nobody goes to prison because there're no prison spaces left.
    That will be a dead law. Not the first, and definitively not the last.

    You know, 50 times and you're out... Welcome to UK!

  3. Punishment fitting the crime not possible here by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 4, Informative

    UK is a member of the EU, and as such is not allowed to restore the death penalty. Thus, death by torture as subject implies, is not an option, and jail time will have to do.

    I really hate the pervasive meme that a crime is less of an issue if the damage is spread out over many victims, rather than concentrated on a few individuals. The economic damage done by a single large scale spam attack is large enough to fund several life saving operations. Just because you can't name the person who died doesn't make the crime any less severe.

    And yes, the two years jail time is the upper limit, reserved to the worst cases. Most offenders will get far less than that, and first time offenders will most likely not even face jail time.

  4. Wont work - retarded civil servants by sjwest · · Score: 3, Informative

    Like your humour

    but the uk's information commissioners office is far too lame to do anything about it. - explain why evil empire Microsoft sued the Milton Keynes spammer ,and not the civil service.

    Blair and Bush masters of FUD '15 - minutes before you die'. Final thought: Imformation commisioners office (UK) could not party in brewery.