Spam mail - how to avoid your business acting illegally (Part 2)

by Charisse Gray / NSW Business Chamber

The Spam Act 2003 provides penalties for direct marketers or other parties sending spam either via email or by way of mobile phone SMS messaging. The Spam Act came into effect on 10 April 2004. There are significant financial penalties for spammers under the Spam Act.

What are the possible negative effects of spam?

Handled responsibly and in a targeted manner by the marketer direct email can also be informative or useful for recipients and a powerful business tool for legitimate marketers. But handled responsibly and in a targeted manner by the marketer, business tool for legitimate marketers.

However used inappropriately spam can:

contribute to wasted time and reduced productivity
carry viruses
impact email and bandwidth availability from your Internet Service Provider.

The very worse scenario is that spam can threaten the viability and efficiency of electronic messaging.

What should you do?

For companies which use email for direct marketing, remember the three simple rules. These will ensure you do not become a spammer.

Consent: your commercial messages should only be sent when you have consent.

Identify: your commercial messages should always contain clear and accurate identification of who is responsible for sending the message and how they can be contacted.

Unsubscribe: your commercial messages should contain an unsubscribe facility allowing people to indicate that such messages should not be sent to them in future.

To ensure compliance with the SPAM Act, the Australian Computer Society (ACS) recommends business Internet policies be upgraded as follows:

1. GET PERMISSION IN THE FIRST INSTANCE

When contacting any external person or organisation for the first time for promotional purposes, either send a preliminary email seeking consent to receiving promotional emails, or consider using conventional communication methods such as; phone, fax or “snail” mail.

2. COMPLY WITH THE PRIVACY ACT

The SPAM Act complements the Privacy Act, so continued compliance with the Privacy Act is mandatory. Remember that you cannot collect people’s personal particulars, including email address, without their consent and even then the information can only be used for an agreed purpose. (If an individual gives you their business card there is implied consent that contact via the means listed on the business card is permitted.)

3. ALWAYS GIVE THE RECIPIENT AN OUT

Use should be made of signature or suffix functions in email applications to attach contact details automaticallyto all outgoing email.

The ACS recommends the following postscript:

"If you do not wish to receive further emails from me please reply with “Unsubscribe” in the Subject.”

4. IF YOUR EMAIL IS ON THE WEB, SAY “NO SPAM”

When email addresses are conspicuously displayed on a web-site, consider adding a “no spam” tag to deter other parties from inferring your consent to receiving unsolicited email.

5. IF THEY DON’T HAVE IT, THEY CAN’T USE IT

Consider whether you really want to include email addresses on business cards, as this will typically imply your consent.

(NB. This article is of a general nature and is not intended to be legal advice. Readers should obtain legal advice before acting upon this article.)

Charisse Gray (NSW Business Chamber)

Charisse Gray is the Senior Business Writer for NSW Business Chamber and is a highly respected and much published business writer, for print and online, across a wide breadth of topical business issues.