Businesses turn blind eye to spam laws
Businesses turn blind eye to spam laws
A worldwide survey has revealed that businesses around the world have been slow to respond to anti-spam legislation, revealing that they could run the risk of huge fines and even prosecution.
The survey was conducted by Clearswift, the MIMEsweeper company, which has revealed that 34 percent of organisations are still without an anti-spam policy in place.
1,200 businesses responded online from around the world. It also revealed that while more than a third of businesses did not have an anti-spam policy, 19 percent said they did not know if their organisation had a policy.
Anti-spam legislation was introduced into Australia on April 10th, this year, but so far, Clearswift has not noticed any change in the amount of spam being sent from this country too.
Chy Chuawiwat, managing director of Clearswift Asia Pacific, said. "It will take a while for anti-spam legislation to sink in to companies in Australia, but so far there does not seem to be any difference in the level of spam since the legislation came into power. I think there needs to be more education about the risks of sending of marketing emails which could be perceived as spam.
The disturbing thing is that this survey reveals that spam hasn't decreased worldwide, despite anti-spam legislation being introduced into the U.S., the U.K. and Europe since last year. This shows that companies worldwide need know more.
In Australia, the Australian Computer Society is currently drafting up documentation which advice businesses on how to comply to the new laws. Information can also be found on the Australian Communications Authority website."
"The battle is going to be hard to crack down on real spammers, because they will devise new ways to be one step ahead of the legislation. It will be a cat and mouse game. But the sooner businesses comply, the nearer we will be to solving the overall problem, and focusing on the people who cause the most trouble."
The survey also revealed that employee's ignorance of safe email is a big factor in the fight against spam. 22 percent of respondents knew that employees had responded to spam, and only seven percent of firms took action against employees for doing this.
Out of 65 percent of respondents, fewer than 25 percent of their email users bothered to report spam to the IT department.
Related Article: