Spam

Aldo Portelli asks:
I have been receiving a significant number of spam e-mails every day, sometimes even going up to 236, for the past weeks. Although these are being intercepted by my filtering programme, I still have to spend time waiting for them to pass through.

I do have a "spam-fighter" but all it does is segregate the spam e-mails. I would still have to wait until they come in and when I am abroad they clog my mailbox.

Are any EU sanctions in place against senders of spam?

If there is a downside to the internet revolution that is fast changing our lives it must be the large amount of spam that makes it, unwanted, to our mailbox, everyday.

For internet users, "spam", or "unsolicited commercial messages" ranging from financial services to sex-related products at a discount, have become an irritating reality in our daily lives.

Of course, spam messages are those which are unsolicited and unwanted but which still keep coming. There is not much problem with messages that you accept to receive.

There is, in fact, an EU law that prohibits unsolicited commercial communications. Not just by e-mail but also by fax, SMS and MMS.

The law, which also applies to Malta, prohibits the sending of unsolicited commercial communications unless the sender has first obtained the consent of the recipient. In other words, e-mail commercial messages may only be sent to you if you have agreed in advance to receive them.

The only case where the prior consent is not required is where the recipient's contact details have been obtained in the context of a prior sale. For example, if I buy a product from a company and give my contact details in the course of the transaction, my details may then be used by the company to send me promotional messages without my prior consent.

However, the law makes it clear that such messages may only promote products that are similar to those that the customer has already purchased. Moreover, even in these cases, the recipient must be given a clear option of stopping further messages (an opt-out). So the possibilities are truly limited.

The law also prohibits messages which conceal or disguise the identity of the sender and which do not include a valid address to which recipients can send a request to discontinue the messages. In other words, these type of messages are illegal.

The law applies to all spam sent or received within the European Union. That includes spam sent from outside the EU. However, it is obviously difficult to enforce the law in non-EU countries and this requires cooperation with authorities in these countries.

This is, in synthesis, what the law states.

Whether the law is effective is, of course, another matter, judging by the vast amount of spam that many of us still receive.

In practice, we find that the law is usually respected by reputable companies which have a reputation to protect. And we rarely receive unsolicited mail from them.

But the same cannot be said of companies that are not interested in protecting their goodwill or those that conceal their identity when sending messages making it difficult for recipients to identify them or to reply to them. It is these commercial messages that we often have to put up with.

To my mind, the law has not been so effective in curtailing this spam. This not only because regulating a fast-changing technological environment, such as the internet, in an effective manner is inherently difficult, if not completely elusive, but also because regulating the internet calls for a very delicate balance to be struck between the protection of the individual on the one hand and the importance of technological development and business freedom on the other is quite a task.

For the time being, therefore, we may well have to live with spam, putting up with it as a necessary evil of a fantastic invention that is the internet.

Unless and until better spam filters are developed...

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