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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."

1 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. 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.