Proposed anti-spam law not easy to implement: industry experts
By Asha Popatlal, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 24 February 2007 2309 hrs

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SINGAPORE : If you just hate receiving spam e-mail or spam SMS messages, the proposed new law to curb this should mean better things to come.

But industry experts say to actually stop unsolicited emails or text messages from being sent out is easier said than done.

But with so many unwanted e-mails clogging up the inbox, spam has become a big global problem.

The proposed Spam Control Bill in Singapore aims to curb this in three main ways:

- All electronic spam has to be clearly labelled as "advertisement"
- Contact details have to be given so a person can unsubscribe
- Once a person unsubscribes, the spam sender has 10 days to remove him from the mailing list or face legal action.

But there are problems - legislation only affects local servers, and a whopping 80 percent of spam originates from overseas.

And this is leading to some scepticism.

"I think it's pretty unrealistic to implement, especially since most of the servers for marketing are overseas," says Mae Lyn Urquhart, Account Director, Nokomai.

Direct marketeers, like Urquhart, whose company does a lot of online marketing for major brands, however feels it might help tighten the industry.

"We have to be more aware of how we market our communications. You just have to become more creative and more innovative. You have to learn how to cut through the clutter, so that just means a higher bar for everyone," says Urquhart.

Then there is also the question of enforcement.

How will it be done?

While there is no silver bullet solution, anti-virus IT company Symantec says legislation is a start.

For now, only four countries - the US, UK, China and Australia - have anti-spam laws.

The eventual goal, say analysts, is to have more and more countries enact their own anti-spam laws.

These countries can then form an international co-operation framework.

"The biggest challenge is to have global participation in such an action because even if a few countries don't participate, then spammers can always originate their spam from those countries like Timbuktu, where the law is not enforced there," says Edward Lim, GM of Symantec.

But Symantec, which was involved in the consultation process for the new law, acknowledges legislation isn't fool-proof.

And since this is a rapidly evolving field, the company says any law would also have to play a catch-up game.

For example, the proposed law does not take into account spam from new fields like Internet telephony. - CNA /ls