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UK Spam Controlled by UK's Advertising Standards Agency 152

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can-i-have-some-of-that dept.
Goth Biker Babe writes "The Advertising Standards Agency in the UK has outlined new rules which govern text advertisements including SMS spam, e-mail spam, and web pop-ups according to the BBC. All unsolicited advertising must now clearly identify itself as advertising. This is as a direct result of the number of complaints about junk texts, e-mail and web pop-ups. All thought the article doesn't mention it a BBC news report this morning stated that unsolicited advertising must now be opt-in rather than opt-out."
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UK Spam Controlled by UK's Advertising Standards Agency More

UK Spam Controlled by UK's Advertising Standards Agency

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  • As if it will help. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Big Mark ( 575945 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:01AM (#5432319)
    Most of the spam I get (as a UK resident) comes from the US. Get them to clean up their act and spam would be dead.

    -Mark

    • Re:As if it will help. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:06AM (#5432336)
      I take exception to that, I have been working diligently over the last few years producing spam in Vietnam, Korea, Tiawan, China and Japan, we've worked very hard to cultivate this regional stereotype especially faced with stiff competition from Nigerian fraudsters, give credit where it's due. Spam doesn't come from the US, it's merely targetted at countries with the most suspectably dumb and gullable people.
      • it's merely targetted at countries with the most suspectably dumb and gullable people.

        I assume you refer to the people who pay for this method of 'advertising'.

        Or do you mean the countries with the kind of person who makes up words, like 'misunderestimated', or 'suspectably'?
    • We invite you to come over and give our spammers a royal smacking, and then deport them to Austrialia.
      • We invite you to come over and give our spammers a royal smacking, and then deport them to Austrialia.
        Where in hell is Austrialia ??? Is it a southcentral european penal colony???
    • I just ran traces on the last spam messages I got: 1 Brazil 1 Miami, FL 1 China 1 Korea I get more from abroad it looks like.
    • True email spam would be hard to police this way. I think its more targeted at SMS spam, which is a growing annoyance. There have been a couple of high profile cases with gullible people ringing premium rate numbers to claim there special "prize".

  • Sounds good, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr.Enormous ( 651727 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:01AM (#5432320)
    ...they're planning to enforce this how? Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think saying "don't spam" is going to mean much to the Nigerians who keep promising me untold riches. Still, I suppose you have to start somewhere.
    • Untold riches from Nigeria? You too? Sheeesh...

    • Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:5, Funny)

      by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:05AM (#5432335) Homepage
      ....they're planning to enforce this how?

      The same way the UN enforces its resolutions.

      That is to say, if you don't obey this resolution.... Hey! You better had obey this resolution, or... um... or else... um... we're going to pass another resolution if you don't obey!

    • Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by benito27uk ( 646600 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:08AM (#5432358)
      I agree its not going to stop email spam, but I think this is more aimed at text spam to mobile phones, companies are sending out spam texts to people and when they reply they send to premium rate phone numbers costing 50pence/ £1 a minute as these are uk numbers they will hopefully be able to reduce the amount of people - especially children replying to them and more companies like this one http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2223504.stm will get fined large amounts

    • Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by NexusTw1n ( 580394 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:11AM (#5432373) Journal
      It's a start. Spam is an international problem, and there is no chance that Korea or even US spammers are going to pay any attention to the ASA.

      But it is a start. About 5% of my spam is clearly UK based, companies offering to reduce my phone bill, or grey box PCs for 200 quid etc. Hopefully I can now stop this small percentage getting through.

      Bear in mind this is also for mobile text spam, which while not currently a massive problem, if not nipped in the bud could become a worse problem than email spam. Hopefully we'll see the ASA dishing out 50 grand fines [theregister.co.uk], the US will see profit this gives the government and follow suit.

    • ...they're planning to enforce this how? Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think saying "don't spam" is going to mean much to the Nigerians who keep promising me untold riches. Still, I suppose you have to start somewhere.

      I assume you are thinking of e-mail instead of SMS messages to cell phones. The SMS messages can be traced accurately enough and thus whatever punishments laws or regulations set, they can be enforced.

      • I thought you could send an email to a machine at your cell phone service provider and this would then be sent to your phone as an SMS message. If this is true how can SMS be traced anybetter than email?
    • I'm sure that there will be one or two poor sobs who will be made an example of using this law.
      Outside of that, you're right, very little good will come from this (mostly)- the opt-in is good, and this will control the local (UK) advertising.

    • Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrFredBloggs ( 529276 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:25AM (#5432471) Homepage
      "they're planning to enforce this how?"

      The ASA has no teeth. It's a self-regulatory body. If a member breaches it, they`ll be `told off` by the ASA, but there are no mandatory fines, and spammers will NOT ever be members of the - this is not a law.

      Nothing to see here.
    • There is one way which will probably not have any effect on most spam but might be effective for some (such as "guaranteed acceptance for a credit card".) That is to hold any UK branches/offices/subsidiaries etc of the spammer responsible for offending advertisments sent to anyone in the UK.
    • I tend to agree that enforcement is generally impractical (and there have been lots of discussions around what may really be needed).

      However, new laws can be *quite* helpful, especially if they get a lot of press. After all, spam works because people believe the claims, click the link, and give the spammers money.

      The more people understand what "spam" is, and the fly-by-night operations that these really are, the less likely they'll be to cough up the cash, no matter how sadly underdeveloped their genitalia may be, or how willing they are to help a kind Nigerian gentleman.

      Recognizing that you have received an *illegal* email makes it a little harder to get sucked into the promises.

  • why would this reduce spam?? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by in_ur_face ( 177250 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:03AM (#5432325)
    "All unsolicited advertising must now clearly identify itself as advertising."

    so now i'll get spam which says that it is spam...will this reduce the amount i get? I guess now I can have better email filters, but I dont think it is a real solution to the problem..

    • I think this is a perfect compromise to the problem.

      If every ad said "Advertisement: " in the subject line, then you'd only read them if you wanted to, or filter them out easily, or have the ISP filter them easily.

      I really dont care if people want to advertise their stuff to me, I just resent the crap that wastes your time trying to look like legitimate mail, and the outright scams.

    • so now i'll get spam which says that it is spam...will this reduce the amount i get?

      Of course! Now you can just set up a filter to deny any email that has both of these statements in it:

    • Well, I get a lot of spam trying to pass itself off as legitimate mail, or using all kinds of sneaky ways to get around my filters. Its stupid of them to do so (I'm actively trying to avoid their crap, what makes them think I'll want it when they force me to get it?), it should also be illegal, and punishable by catapult.

  • ASA Weak and Feable (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:03AM (#5432327)
    The ASA guidelines are voluntary not statutory, they're an industry body that has no legal power, the most they can do is pass a complaint over to Dept Trade & Industry when serious illegality has occured.

    Apparently the ASA had a massive increase in complaints regarding mobile txt messages, they went tenfold... from 6 to 60 complaints in a year! Anyway, by June I suspect not a single spam will enter my inbox... errr, right.
    • "Weak and feeble" - and yet I for one cannot remember ever hearing about a company telling them where to go.

      They may not have legal powers, but for now at least, the UK advertising industry listens to them. The alternative is for the government to take matters into their own hands and legislate, which the industry certainly won't want.

  • Nice ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Draoi ( 99421 ) <.draiocht. .at. .mac.com.> on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:04AM (#5432329)
    .. but how does the ASA intend to enforce it seeing as most spam appears to originate from Chinese or south-American open relays/Spamhausen & is generally propagated by US companies?

    I'd like to think it's a step forward in the fight against spam but I'm not sure quite how ...

    • Not to mention that if you forward on a picture of pr0n spam that is illegal to the ASA saying you received it when going to a certain website, you might be had for transmitting obscene material.

  • Not going to help (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jjhplus9 ( 654212 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:04AM (#5432330)
    Less than 1% of the spam that hits hour servers is from a source inside the UK.
    It is very hard indeed to imagine how this is going to help stem the flow of spam.
    The restrictions on banner addvertising is going to be interesting in practice.
    Anyone care to guesse how these regulations are going to be interpreted pragmatically?
    How will it affect already shrinking banner advert revenues?

  • EU Regulations (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kr3m3Puff ( 413047 ) <meNO@SPAMkitsonkelly.com> on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:05AM (#5432334) Homepage Journal
    Probally the main reason it doesn't mention that it needs to be Opt-In is because of EU Privacy rules, all unsolicted advertising is supposed to be Opt-In.

    All forms have to be written that you proactively allow sharing of your information, if you don't expressily give your consent, your information cannot be shared.

    The US could learn a lot from EU Privacy Laws.

    • Re:EU Regulations (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cheeseflan ( 462270 )

      Mod the parent up!

      Whenever I see yet another technical "fix" for spam I just wish that the USA would give it's citizens the right to own their data. EU citizens do - so we see spam coming from the USA and only a trickle from inside our own borders.

      We could then push to close the rest of the world out - and really drop the volume of spam...

      When are people going to stop offering me mortgages - in Dollars?

      • Re:EU Regulations (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Sheetrock ( 152993 )
        Yours isn't the first comment I've seen mentioning the tidal wave of spam from the U.S., yet here in the middle of this great land I get spam coming from just about everywhere but America (and junk faxes 'from' the U.K. to boot.) Yet they all seem to use dollars too, or are pushing a pump-and-dump scheme with stocks on the NYSE/Nasdaq. Who would have thought spammers lie? :)

        I've pushed the idea before and I will again that one (meaningful) country needs to set the standard of no spam on a national level and use a scheme of border router filters (in the literal sense!) on SMTP traffic to block everything except from/to pairs whitelisted by citizens and SMTP traffic from countries that meet the no-spam standards. I doubt the U.S. would be the first adopter and frankly don't care -- it'd be a good kick to the ass to get our representatives serious about fixing things if the E.U. implemented something like this.

        There are an array of technical alternatives that could be strung together into a workable solution, but it involves an infrastructure update. I'm informed that this is about as likely to happen as the deployment of IPv6 and, therefore, am not holding my breath.

        • In principle I like your ideas, but I see a very real flaw in the from/to pair whitelist concept. People sometimes want email from people who's from address they do not know. Let's say we meet at a convention, have a discussion about your ideas on spam blocking and I want to hear more. I give you my card which has my email address on it (an address for just that purpose). I write down your email address with the intention of adding it to my whitelist so that you can send to me. Then by the time I get back to the office, I've forgotten about you and fail to add you to my whitelist. Your email is rejected and I fail to get the information that I actually wanted from you! - Now imagine salespeople that hand out cards to potential clients (some international) so the client can at his or her discretion, contact them. The client may not wish to give a from address to the salesperson, but may wish to contact them at some later date. With your process, their email will be blocked and the company could/would loose business. The business community would not hold still for that, for long. Cause a man to loose money and you can be sure he will not be quiet about it. Enough of them yelling and governments notice, next thing you know, no matter how good the technology, how well intentioned the process, it will be forcibly removed.
    • I may be missing some big point here, but how can unsolicited mail be opt in? If I've opted in to receive it, then it's not unsolicited, is it? Or have I _really_ not got something basic here? There's also a telephone preference scheme over here in the UK which means that you're not supposed to get called at home by advertisers or marketeers, but it seems to have made little or no difference to how many calls I get. I'm suspicious of how well this will work, the ASA doesn't really have much power anyway, but it would be nice. The problem, however, may just move overseas. Heck, most of the crap I get is from the US anyway, so this won't help.
      • >I may be missing some big point here, but how
        >can unsolicited mail be opt in? If I've opted in
        >to receive it, then it's not unsolicited, is it?

        Well, lets say you fill out a registration form for a piece of software. You can agree to get advertising. There is a difference between a regular opt-in news letter and a random spattering of e-mail or phone calls offering services you didn't ask for, even if you agreed to share your information. Does that make sense?

        • There is a difference between a regular opt-in news letter and a random spattering of e-mail or phone calls offering services you didn't ask for, even if you agreed to share your information. Does that make sense?

          In a way, but it also still stands that I didn't opt in for the mail splattering - regardless of whether I actually said "yes" to the newsletter - so the mail splattering is still unsolicited, especially if it's unrelated to the original service/product

          YMMV, but that's what I see. Which is probably why I don't think this will work.
    • If you have to "opt-in" somewhere, doesn't that make it no longer "unsolicited"? (not that that's a bad thing)
      • If you have to "opt-in" somewhere, doesn't that make it no longer "unsolicited"? (not that that's a bad thing)

        Dude, that's exactly what I was saying!

        And if the checkbox says something like "we may share this information with trusted companies" then don't check the damn thing!

        But I will miss getting my degree from an American University, being offered cheaper-than-drug-store medicine, and even finding out how I just won $BIGNUM on an imaginary lottery.

    • Unsolicited? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MacAndrew ( 463832 )
      Doesn't your spam, like mine, usually claim you signed up to get it? Often with some meta-list like GREATDEALZ that you can't possibly unsubscribe from, and unsubcribing removes you from this vendor's list only, that is, if unsubscribing ever worked because it's either a scam or the account is shut down before you can reach it. Maybe I did consent, by not reading every word of a privacy policy that probably didn't exist anyway.

      You can sense my cynicism. I think the rule makes sense, but question how much good it will do. Now, innovative enforcement I would be interested in. How about threatening to punish the originating ISP? Is it too much to require them to examine mass mailers, obtain a bond against abuse, and so on? After all, they provide the tools that make spam possible.
    • Unfortunately, the US is applying as much pressure as they can - helped by crummy Europpean corporations and lobbyists - that we change our privacy laws to something less usable.

      *sigh*

      TANJ.
    • You know what the difference is between opt-in and opt-out? One has a disclaimer claiming to be opt-in.

      You are receiving this message because you opted-in when we harvested your address or randomly hit your mail server looking for accounts. Or we found your address somewhere else. You may unsubscribe by clicking on this link which will send you more spam, or email this inactive address.

  • Can they sue Nigerian or Korean spammeers??
    (Can we say 'offshore advertiser' plague?)
    • That is the serious difference between control on the SPAM level and trader level. ASA involvement can be on the trader level. This means that they may directly force the trader (if a UK) company to restrain from SPAM practices and they may also issue such a decision.

      It is true that their decisions do not have the force of a legal act. But AFAIK there have been practically no cases in recent UK history for a company to try to disobey them.

  • Great, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:06AM (#5432339)
    ... a UK law will only affect spam sent by UK citizens. I don't get much of that. I see a whole hell of a lot of stuff from the US, and occasionally from China or Korea (not just from America _via_ China, but actually sent by the Chinese); hardly ever anything from Europe.

    The only thing I see from British spammers is pyramid schemes and the guy on Blueyonder who keeps sending out virus mails. Hopefully they'll get whacked a bit harder now, which can only be a good thing :-)

    • Oops: didn't read article closely enough. ASA, not government: absolutely no force of law, just guidelines for responsible advertisers. Such people generally don't spam anyway. One plus point, though - some of them were beginning to experiment with SMS spam, ISTR Sainsbury's did so a while back. Nice to see that being discouraged, even if it's not actually a ban.

  • obligatory spam (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...

    Wife: I don't want any spam!
    Man: Why can't she have egg bacon spam and sausage?
    Wife: That's got spam in it!
    Man: Hasn't got as much spam in it as spam egg sausage and spam, has it?
    Vikings: Spam spam spam spam (crescendo through next few lines)
    Wife: Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then?
    Waitress: Urgghh!
    Wife: What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like spam!
    Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
    Waitress: Shut up!
    Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
    Waitress: Shut up! (Vikings stop) Bloody Vikings! You can't have egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam.
    Wife: (shrieks) I don't like spam!

    etc. etc.

  • Unsolicited opt-in? (Score:3, Funny)

    by $$$$$exyGal ( 638164 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:07AM (#5432349) Homepage Journal
    unsolicited advertising must now be opt-in rather than opt-out

    If you have to "opt-in" to your spam, then how is that unsolicited?

  • ASA != Government (Score:5, Insightful)

    by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:08AM (#5432359)
    They're an industry self-regulatory body. This means that respectable advertisers won't spam, but mainsleaze was never the big problem. Pyramid frauds and penis pill salesmen don't care what the ASA says.
  • Just like that 'opt-out' email spam policy with the mandatory unsubscribe link at the bottom of emails - people will either disregard or ignore it.
  • Today the UK announced that all spam must identify itself as such.

    Internet connectivity providers applauded the move. Said one executive "This will make spam easier to filter, but it will definitely increase the amount it get."

    Hillary Rosen, spokesdemon for the RIAA said "This will reduce the available bandwidth for evil copyright pirate terrorists."

  • can someone explain this? (Score:5, Funny)

    by brmic ( 651682 ) <brmicNO@SPAMfreenet.de> on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:13AM (#5432384)
    And the rule which stops car advertisers encouraging anti-social or irresponsible driving has been strengthened - now they must not even condone bad driving.

    does it really say that before the Advertising Standards Authority (whoever that is) stepped in, car advertisers in the UK promoted road rage and hoped to sell cars by claiming you could hit children and old ladies without the slightest dent to your cherished chrome bumper?

  • Unsolicited advertising must be opt in (Score:4, Funny)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:14AM (#5432395) Homepage Journal
    ...unsolicited advertising must be opt in...


    Unsolicited advertising means advertising you did not ask for.

    But to opt in means you have asked for it.

    But if you have asked for it, it is not unsolicited.

    LOGIC ERROR: Norman, co-ordinate
    • "To find out where the missle was, it takes where it wasn't, because it knows where it is, by where it isan't, and if you subtract where it is from where it isan't you get a coefficient about where it should be, and if its not where it should be, and it isan't where it was, and its not where it could be then, you have an error."

  • Messenger service (Score:1, Redundant)

    by AgentGray ( 200299 )
    My favorite new type of SPAM (at least to me) is the SPAM that uses the Microsoft messenger service on my W2K machine.

    Glad I have the firewall on there now...
    • or, you could disable the messenger service.
    • Or you could unbind netbios and file/print sharing for ms networks from your dialup connection...

      In fact you really should be doing that for security anyway :)
  • All thought the article doesn't mention it a BBC news report

    Well I thought the article did mention it a BBC news report.

    Back to you Chet.

  • nothing like government trying to do the work of the people.....Once the government starts making regulations on what you can and can not see on the internet. Next thing you know there will be your own personal government employee typing in urls for you and reading your email BEFORE you to make sure it is not of an unsolicated fashion....

    What next popup-ad are going to need to say Unsoliciated popup ad in big bold letters then show the ad?

  • Is this why God created (gasp) Government? (Score:4, Funny)

    by release7 ( 545012 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:21AM (#5432438) Homepage Journal
    Nobody ever said Government was perfect (and I defy you to find an institution that is), but dammit, it's the only thing we have to bring order and law to a world of chaos. The anti-government, anti-regulation libertarian rhetoric that has captured the popular mind in the last couple of decades has got to come to an end before the spam problem will be solved in the US. The UK is on the right track.

  • Green Card spam (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How was the story about two lawyers who spammed for some green card lottery and were later killed by some geek?
  • All thought the article doesn't mention it a BBC news report this morning stated that unsolicited advertising must now be opt-in rather than opt-out.

    You mean one realized that the article does mention it? No surprise there, no one RTFAs on /.

    Wha... that was supposed to have been "although"?
    Oh.

  • This is basically self-protection (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doctor Hu ( 628508 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:27AM (#5432483)
    The ASA is a trade association that draws up voluntary guidelines to be followed by companies who care about being seen to be 'responsible'. Enough people are now sufficiently irritated by the floods of unsolicited dreck that it's now in the interests of the major advertisers to scale back their use of the mechanism, so lo and behold the ASA comes up and says 'you shouldn't do that'.

    The effects are likely to be marginal at best. Most large companies are smart enough not to irritate potential customers this way. The slimebrains that peddle Big Man and Easy Money snake-oil won't take any notice. Maybe it will have some effect on the armies of small companies that are competing to replace your windows with new! improved! double-glazed! fittings! - we can but hope.

    I can't help being reminded that it was an early Anglo-saxon ruler, Kanute, who famously ordered the tide not to come in.

  • Not original, but correct.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CmdrTostado ( 653672 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:34AM (#5432517) Journal
    If no-one responded to spam, there would be no market for the "service" and the industry would just dry up and blow away, some-one out there is replying to the junk. Where there is a demand, there will be a service. Don't reply to spam..

    I don't like green eggs and spam Sam I am..

  • huh (Score:1, Funny)

    by ptrangerv8 ( 644515 )
    If it's opt in, it's not un solicited, now then is it? SUPPOSEDLY, Gator/GAIN is optin, but I've never said yes to it...
    Besides, spam is already opt-in - the little linky at the bottom aren't optout, they'er opt-in - it means that you're reading the emails so, they send you more....

    >>
    >>

  • Catch the spam... (Score:2, Informative)

    by baldwang ( 644201 )
    If you're interested, I now use a spam filter which works pretty good. It's a peer-to-peer filter, so the definitions you create for spam are shared across all users, and vice versa. Since I started using it, I've seen very little spam in my inbox. Unfortunately, I think it only plugs into outlook, but I'm not sure. Maybe somebody here can reverse engineer this baby and pump a new cross-client/platform net...

    Here it is [cloudmark.com]

  • Pop ups (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    I just find this ironic

    The BBC news article says:

    "The new code also covers banner and pop-up advertising on the internet, though not a company's claims on its own website."

    What do you get when you goto to ASA website [asa.org.uk]? Why a popup of course :)

    Rus
    • ... but the second part of your quote says "though not a company's claims on its own website".

      The ASA popup was info about ASA business. At least, the one served up to me a moment ago.

  • uh-huh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Captain_Stupendous ( 473242 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:53AM (#5432647) Homepage
    How exactly does "unsolicited" work with "opt-in"? I thought unsolicited was "opt-out" by definition?

  • Intentify as spam (Score:4, Insightful)

    by broothal ( 186066 ) <christian@fabel.dk> on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:56AM (#5432667) Homepage Journal
    Great, so now I can add a procmail filter to remove all mails beginning with [ADV] and voila - Bob's your uncle and I'm free of spam.

    Oh yeah - I also need to filter (adv)..and [AD]...and [-ad-]... and {A - D - V - E - E - R - T - I - S - M - E - N - T } and... well, you get my drift. The point is this:

    Spam that identifies itself as spam is still spam, and I already know it's spam without a prefix. So what good is it?
    With a standard prefix, Joe Luser can use his Outlook to filter the spam after it has been downloaded. Now, those who does that, wouldn't buy anything from spammers anyway. So the spammer doesn't care. To accomplish his return rate, he just sends out another million emails.. and another one.

    There's only one law that will ever work. Don't send commercial email unless the receiver asked for it. All the other suggestions and implementations are just jumping through hoops.

    /Christian
  • As far as I'm aware these measures are not government regulations as yet. They're are self regulation measures. Still it's a start. If you are in the UK. and you have a complaint about Unsolicited Advertising then it's up to you to contact the ASA who then passes the info to a body who may or may not be able to do something about it

  • But information wants to be FREE!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @10:58AM (#5432689) Homepage
    These advertisers shouldn't be viewed as capitalist pigs trying to peddle worthless products upon a frustrated public.

    They should be revered for the incredible volume of information they liberate and release to all of us on a daily basis!

  • Unilateralism should spread (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think every nation that thinks of itself as a subscriber to common decency should criminalize spam. Today the UK, tomorrow the US, Canada, Oz, France... eventually the evil ones will be forced to set up shop in Bolivia... it may be impossible to eradicate completely, but we should all petition our governments to act now.

    Question - how much faster would the net be if there were no unsolicited junk flying back and forth?

  • Pax Britannica (Score:2, Funny)

    by PD ( 9577 )
    That must be the UK's plot to take over the world (again). With a few more laws like that, I think there will be a popular movement here in the former colonies to rejoin the Queen's domain!

  • unsolicited opt-in?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by matt4077 ( 581118 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @11:19AM (#5432830) Homepage
    is that something like a bluish red?

  • Facts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jaavaaguru ( 261551 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @11:20AM (#5432838) Homepage
    I'm all for this. One thing about the article though:

    If an email list is opt-in, then it's hardly unsolicited.
  • Will koreans and russians follow suit?
    I must learn to spell "advertisement" in all these languages, so that I can filter them!
  • I have a series of filters setup in Outlook to block mail based on a large range of ever growing criteria. If we had these standards here, it would be easier to just look for the [advert] flag in the subject line or header.

    Of course, I'm not sure there is much that can be done to affect mail coming from outside the nation's borders and laws.


  • Well it's my own fault for opting in to all of the penile enlargement, spy-cam, and russian mail-order bride companies.
  • They seem to be very context sensitive when it comes to censorship of ads. For example, they allowed this very provocative (and not work safe) ad [vogue.co.uk] to go forward, on the basis that it would be used in sophisticated fashion magazines.

    If it were to be used on a billboard across the street from a school, the impression their ruling gives is that it would not have been given the go ahead.

    • Being from (and living in) the U.K. I wouldn't describe that advert as "very provocative". I largely agree with the ASA on that one: not on a billboard or a newspaper, but OK in a specialist magazine. Maybe we have different standards over here - I've heard that visitors from the USA are often surprised by the amount of sexual content in our media (although we have nothing compared to most of Europe), whereas we get surprised by the amount of violence in yours, especially during the daytime.
  • I find it unbelievable that SPAM is still profitable for those sending it. On my last count I receive over 100 SPAM mails a day (I own multiple registered domains). If I did NOT use a filter I would forget email all together. With the shear number of unsolicited mails being sent out it just amazes me that anyone out there looks at them long enough to consider responding making it profitable for the senders.

  • SMS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by samhalliday ( 653858 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2003 @12:26PM (#5433335) Homepage Journal
    i dont think this will effect email or web browsing any... but this is fantastic news none the less as previously it was only phone and mail which was registered, and if anyone sent you any advertisements in the UK (if you are on the TPS telephone preference service, or mail equivalent) you can get them in big shit for it... legally.

    this is good becuase now i wont get any SMS's from my own provider who i dont care to listen to as i am sure a similar system will be implemented for SMS.

    The advertisement companies will listen to this in the UK. on SMS you must give some form of UK contact details for sales (otherwise the text was wasted), and if you are spamming, you WILL be caught.

    obviously with the international nature of the internet, this will not effect email spam, but at least you can complain to someone now if its .uk!

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