‘Spam’ costs Internet users EUR 10 billion a year’ – study
Internet subscribers across the world are unwittingly paying an estimated EUR 10 billion a year in connection costs just to receive junk e-mails or ‘spam’, according to a study undertaken for the European Commission. The study was carried out as background research for EU initiatives which aim to reconcile consumer privacy and data protection concerns with the boom in e-commerce and Internet development.Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said that the exponential growth of junk e-mail in recent years was a fact of life. ‘Current technology allows a single cyber-marketing company to send half a billion personalised ad mails via the World Wide Web every day,’ he said. ‘Consumer information gleaned from individual web transactions/consultations can be sold for large sums of money, and yet many individual subscribers are unaware of the scale and implications of these developments.’ The Commissioner said that EU data protection directives must be fairly applied across the Union and he added: ‘We aim to encourage the continued development of internet services without weakening the individual's right to privacy.’
The study examined legal protection against spam in the EU and found the law applied in different ways in the various 15 countries. Protection is usually afforded via either opt-outs (e.g. a box to tick if you do not wish to receive unsolicited information) or opt-ins (a formal request to receive such information). Opt-ins are required in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Germany. The Commission proposes to update EU law so that opt-ins are required in each country, a move which, according to the study, would bolster consumer confidence.
Full text of Commission press release
EUbusiness, 02 Feb 2001
Categories: Finance, Internet, Telecoms
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