What is Spam?
What we’re talking about here isn’t a popular product in Hawaii containing: pork with ham meat added, salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite; we’re talking about emails… masses of emails, all the same, sent out like shotgun pellets unsolicited to multitudes of people.
These emails are often of a commercial nature, though they can also be sent with malicious intent in an attempt to infect large numbers of computers/phones/devices.
Can’t I just unsubscribe?
Sadly, with many spam messages all the unsubscribe function is going to do is get your email on a list of people known to respond to emails. Compiling these list are sometimes the whole purpose as it’s valuable marketing information that can be sold to other spammers.
Australia’s Anti Spam Act 2003
One of the shining jewels in e-legislation around the world is Australia’s Anti Spam Act 2003. It was the first one to insist that companies can’t send unsolicited email to people unless they have either opted in or there’s an pre-existing buisness relationship (they’re already a customer.) It also states that unsubscribe must be functional (not like those harvesting emails I talked about above.)
Europe followed suit in 2018 with similar legislation, but sadly, the internet is global so while Australia and Europe now no longer pose a spam threat, the US still has an opt-out system so it’s perfectly legal for US companies to send unsolicited messages to anyone, the same goes for Africa and Asia.
So what can I do?
Make sure you flag any unsolicited emails that you don’t want as “junk” or “spam” (depending on your email program.) If it’s from an Australian company, you can ask them to stop and if they don’t, report them to ACMA.
