SPAM Not!

SPAM is a pain in the butt for everyone, everywhere.  Sky.com has an interesting article about SPAM in the UK, Time to Get Tough on Spammers.  An official report, commissioned by the prime minister,  recommends making it easier for consumers to keep track of their personal information and who has access to it.

I know, in general, that the UK has better consumer protection laws than the US.  I will be writing about some of those protections in the future.  Just to clarify, I am in the US but this blog will talk about the SPAM problem as a global issue.

Some of the suggestions from the commission make sense: limit what a business can do with your personal information, limit the ability to sell personal information, even information gathered via public sources.  Some don’t make much sense: hard copy electoral roles, for example.  Limiting access to information is not  the answer, IMHO.  Just “black out” the sensitive information.

The commission also mentions social networking like Bebo and Facebook.  I really hope they don’t try to legislate “protection” for social networking.  If someone is comfortable leaving contact information on a social network, they should be allowed to do so.

If governments world-wide can get rid of scum bags that harvest and sell personal information, that would be great and would go a long way toward canning SPAM.  But, until it is a global solution (which I don’t see happening any time soon), then there is little point in restricting access to info.  Punish those within your borders, work with foreign governments, and make SPAM as expensive as possible for the perpetrators.

The one law that I think every non-corrupt government should enact is to make it illegal to sell anyone’s personal information (and that means ANY personal information) unless the person has agreed in advance to allow it to be sold.  It should also be illegal to BUY personal information unless a company can provide proof that the people on the list have “opted in”.  That won’t solve Chinese SPAM, but it would take care of most of it.

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