The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has admitted it fails to take legal steps against UK spammers while "successfully" enforcing regulations against 13 fax marketers.
The ICO, the UK's last official port of call to complain about spam, said it had received more complaints about illicit fax marketing than junk email.
In an email to ZDNet UK sister site silicon.com, the ICO wrote: "As breaches of these regulations are not criminal offences there can not be any prosecutions. Putting this into context with other complaints we receive under the same and previous legislation, we receive far more complaints about direct marketing faxes and have been successful in taking enforcement action in 13 cases of breaches by fax companies."
The government details were obtained through a request under the Freedom of Information Act. The ICO's comments follow a report from the department in which it said it required more powers to act against spam but for now the public should complain to their ISPs.
"[T]he commissioner recognises the limits of regulation alone, especially where materials originate from outside the UK. There have been some initiatives to encourage co-operation between the various regulatory authorities — for example, the Information Commissioner has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with other relevant UK bodies and authorities in Australia and the US.
"In the meantime, the Commissioner recommends that individuals take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of getting unwanted email, by seeking advice from their Internet service provider," the ICO said in its annual report.
According to industry sources, the ICO is writing to spammers as a result of 300 complaints deemed 'actionable', to request removal of the complainant's email address from the spammer's list.
Anti-spam campaigner Spamhaus has hit out at the ICO for failing to control spammers. Steve Linford, director of Spamhaus, said: "If I was a spammer I'd love Britain. I can spam as much as I like and I get an office who deals with opting people out of my lists for free; I don't even need to pay staff to do it for me as they're paid by the government.
"The reality is that spammers in the UK can spam the entire country and at the very worst they might get a letter some months later from the ICO asking them to stop spamming Mrs Jones of Richmond."
Linford explained that Spamhaus and ISPs are the only ones stopping spammers, by barring them from sending junk email through their systems.
"The UK's spam law was a waste of time and public money, it urgently needs to be scrapped and rewritten to properly ban spamming and make a ban enforceable," he added.
Talkback
I agree. Legislation has not made a jot of difference. Many of my spam e-mails at work come from Russia at the moment and they are written in Russian! These and all the others in English waste a lot of my work time. Mine get filtered and deleted immediately.
I am Communications Manager for a Computer Consultancy so I see them all!
I agree. Legislation has not made a jot of difference. Many of my spam e-mails at work come from Russia at the moment and they are written in Russian! These and all the others in English waste a lot of my work time. Mine get filtered and deleted immediately.
I am Communications Manager for a Computer Consultancy so I see them all!
I have just looked at the Information Commissioners web site and can find NO way of reporting spam (always forward the entire email - including internet mail headers) to the ICO. It is not, therefore, surprising that the ICO have not bothered to do anything to implement the legislation.
Presumably, it needs someone like Microsoft or AOL to take the ICO to court to force them to implement the law.
I didn't realise the UK was a problem??? It is commonly known that as much as 70% of all spam originates in the US. UK companies only account for very little. Maybe, our Govnm't doesn't want effective legislation, in case it upsets it's friends in the US. Imagine the diplomatic relations if Scotland Yard keep going to the US to arrest Americans. That would be outrageous as it's only OK for the FBI to police the world and come to the UK to arrest people. The way forward is for the US Govnm't to show the example and prove to the world that it is serious about the problem. Only then would the UK, Germany, Russia etc. etc. follow the example. Finally, the Law should deal with spammers, not software companies. Microsoft should compensate British companies, from the $7m that they are to receive from a spammer. Our companies lose more than that every year.
I agree that this hasn't worked so far. It's a pity that it can't follow the success of the CPR, which has worked well for myself and others that I know in cutting phone spam. I append below a clip from the CPR webpages:
"You have probably arrived at our site due to the fact that you are being inundated by nuisance and unwanted sales and marketing calls.
These types of calls are sadly on the increase due to companies no longer being allowed to contact you directly with their products and services via email.
So unfortunately it has a knock on effect, and these companies are now reverting back to using the telephone to try and sell you something, you really do not want. "
Isn't It interesting, though, that they seem to believe that companies ARE being diverted back to the phone from spamming and email. Wonder what that means?
This is bad news. The UK will soon be as bad as China and Korea.