AMSTERDAM. Since the Dutch anti-spam law last October was passed, semi-legitimate spam, mostly in the form of advertisements from businesses to businesses, went down by 85%. The OPTA (Independent Mail and Telecommunication Authority) investigates all submitted complaints in order to see whether they are relevant. Over the past 5 months, more than 10.000 complaints accused companies of sending unwanted advertisements. This is 3 times more than in the same period the previous year. As a result so far, 39 Official warnings have been handed out.
New regulations
With the objective to reduce the annoyance and economical damage of unsolicited electronic messages, the Dutch antispam law came into effect. The quintessence of the law is that no advertisement can be send via email without explicit previous permission by the recipient. Recipients that feel their rights have been violated, can forward their complaints to a special website, www.spamklacht.nl. This website is a critical resource to analyze the complaints and decide which action to undertake. The OPTA as in independent organization is in charge of the evaluation and may fine violators for up to 450.000 EUR per case.
Nationwide support
According to the industry figures, spam sent from the Netherlands over the last months has been reduced with more than 85 percent. “The nationwide fight against spammers is finally becoming a success”, says Nils Decker from the email security firm SpamExperts B.V. “Spam became a worldwide disaster and luckily many countries take this problem seriously. Recently, Russia followed China by changing the regulations regarding registering their colds. These actions alongside iniatives such as the IPv6 global sender whitelist coined by SpamExperts, shows that the landscape is changing and there is hope to finally use and enjoy email the way it was meant to be, simply SpamFree!”.
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