TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

With a stunning figure of 40% of global e-mail traffic, Spam is without doubt the #1 thing we have come to hate about the internet. According to this BBC News article, new rules would take place for unsolicited e-mail starting from this October, making spam illegal across member states.

Under the directive unsolicited e-mails may only be sent to individuals for direct marketing purposes and "with their prior consent" or where there is an existing customer relationship.

The article mentions that the biggest problem directives may face would be combating the flood of spam which comes from outside the European Union, either way it's good to hear legal measures are being considered already.

Great news!

If both the EU and USA makes spam illegal, spammers'll get a harder time than they've got now...

Of course they'll just switch to servers in other countries, but it's a step in the right direction...

Hopefully we'll see the asian countries making spam illegal too...

Lots of Spam comes from Eastern Europe and Africa as well, and their politics leave a lot to be desired. I wonder if the practice of putting spammers on Black Lists will not kill legal advertising, because once in a blue moon I find something interesting in legitimate ads.

Fantastic news, hopefully those spammers will be out of business sooner rather than later. The spam issue is unbelievably bad, and I get spams every day, most of which don't even have my email address in the address field - go figure! Whats even worse is that there is no sender address either, leaving you little hope of responding.

There is a simple way to prevent spam, and that would be if no one ever responded to spam, then there would be no money made and no advertisements placed. Instead spammers are getting rich from a few *stupid* people responding to spam (sorry running, but you are contributing to the spam menace - we are not talking banner ads here, but bulk unsolicited email).

Dude, I don't click on spam; I don't even bother since very often they conceal whatever it is they're actually selling with apparently harmless products. I meant that when I receive a legit ad about something interesting I click on it.

I guess I should've been more specific.

You're still not being clear, but I suspect you are refering to email that you signed up for (as part of a mailing list), as being 'legit'. That's fine, and there are no plans to ban this type of mail, so you'll still receive it.

isn't it a too fast judgement about people

personally i should be stupid too if i discovered some great website only thanks to advertisments ...

that doesnt change my humble opinion about junk email (i receive about 150 emails a day and i change my email address almost every year !!)

Nothing would make me happier than to receive only the e-mail notifications I signed up for, however not all unsolicited e-mail comes from disreputable sources. I dislike advertising as much as the next guy, but part of the problem is that it’s very cheap to send obscene amounts of e-mail compared to, say, TV. Of course, taking away the “free” Internet would make it prone to becoming another magnate-dominated medium. I lost count on how many names AOL Time Warner owns.

btw they should try to be a little bit more specific at least !

not send ppl in europe stuff about the usa or australia, not send penis enlargement stuff to my girlfriend, and so on

I'm lucky as over the past few days I haven't received any spam, but thats got more to do with the fact that my pop3 account has been down due to a mass spam attack (and I'm not kidding).

I realise that using the term *stupid* is a bit controversial, but spam by its very nature survives based on the philosophy that you only need a very small percentage of users to respond in order to make it worthwhile. Even if you do find something interesting, the fact that you click on it, is the very same reason that spam exists. As already stated, clicking on advertisements that you personally agreed to receive is not spam. Spam is unsolicited email that you didn't ask for.

There's no getting away from it, if you want the spam menace to go away, then you must start by not clicking on spam. No ifs, or buts, about it. You can't have your cake and eat it too - as the saying goes.

PS: I guess could compare clicking on spam, to being a drug addict - when you really want to click, it can be very difficult to stop yourself.

The only time I ever click spam is to browse down to the bottom of it and click the "remove from mailing list" button, even though I never signed up for the damned thing in the first place. I threatened a guy the other day for sending me porn email. I never visit porn sites (seriously). I'm only interested in natural girls. Playboy/Fake Boobs doesn't do a thing for me.
He claimed his list was legit and I said bull**** no it isn't because I never signed up for this, and DANG sure never signed up for it AND got an email asking for confirmation for the mailing list.