Spam enforcers urged to work together

Johannesburg, 12 Oct 2004

International consumer law enforcers from 29 countries were yesterday urged to work together to combat the growing threat of spam.

The International Spam Enforcement Workshop was held in the UK under the auspices of Britain`s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

One of the major aims of the workshop was to look at how to achieve globally co-ordinated enforcement against unlawful and deceptive spam, particularly in light of the fact that the majority of spam originates outside the country it affects, making cross-border co-operation essential.

A report presented at the conference showed that in 2001, only 10% of e-mails were spam, whereas today almost 60% of mails are not business-related, meaning there is great potential for spammers to do real damage to proper e-commerce.

According to FTC chairman, Deborah Marjoras, almost 80% of junk mail originates outside the country where people receive it, making the tracing of who is sending the messages the biggest problem facing anti-spam efforts.

Marjoras says a key problem with spammers is that they hide behind a cloak of anonymity provided by the latest technology, and the path from a spammer to a consumer`s inbox generally crosses one or more borders.

"Spam is a global problem that requires global action," says Erkki Liikanen, EU commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society.

"If we want to combat spam effectively, efforts made in the European Union and other regions of the world must be echoed by similar efforts at the international level, not only by governments but also by businesses and consumers."

According to John Vickers, chairman of the OFT, spam is now more than a typical nuisance, as statistics show that more than half of it is produced by scammers attempting to con people out of cash or useful personal information.

Vickers believes spam is a serious threat to the enormous potential for good that e-commerce and the Web have opened up.

The UK`s Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, believes new powers are necessary to help gather intelligence on spammers.

Because Net services are currently not obliged to hand over information about spam sent via their systems, he called for the power to compel such firms to hand over data and the ability to get injunctions fast-tracked, so that spammers can be taken to court and tackled quickly.