I’m getting some spam from some UK companies to a personal email address. I called and spoke to one of them and they said it won’t happen again but it continues to do so. I looked into complaining officially, under the new regulations that make the EC’s Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications law in the UK.
Under the new law, spammers can be fined £5,000 in a magistrates court or an unlimited penalty from a jury.
Yet it appears it is really up to me to pursue charges through the courts. The Information Commissioners Office, who enforce the new regulations, appear largely neutered (as predicted):
If my complaint is upheld, will the organisation be punished?
If we think the organisation has breached the regulations, we can ask them to put things right, but we cannot punish them for breaking the law.
If my complaint is upheld, will I be entitled to compensation?
We have no powers to award compensation . If you have suffered a loss because an organisation or individual has broken the law, you may be entitled to compensation, but you must claim this through the courts.
The right to compensation applies even if you don’t report the problem to us. You can make a claim to the court whether or not we have agreed that the law has been broken.
No doubt this will cost a lot of my time and money. We should build a simple kit, with some form letters and instructions on pursuing compensation.
Or just take enforcement into our own hands and report them to something like Spamhaus.
Comments
I am in the early stages of possibly taking a UK company to court over this. I have no doubt that a judge will find that they broke the law as they did not get my consent to send me their marketing email. They merely harvested my email from an online jobs site (and they have admitted to this).
The only problem is deciding how much compensation to claim. I have to show that I have suffered damages as a result of breaking the law. I am thinking of arguing that the receiving of the email causes distress and annoyance as I have to sift through hundreds of spam messages per day, of which the email in question was a part of. Also, that the time and effort in defending my rights under the law should be reimbursed, and thirdly that a Sheriff’s Court in Scotland (although there has been no test case in England so far – which is where I will be claiming) ruled that the amount shouldn’t be so little that it didn’t encourage respect for the law. The claimant in this case was awarded £750.
I am also worried about claiming too little, because if my case is successful, it will set a precedent in England that is too lenient on spam – which is a huge social problem.
I’m thinking of claiming £500. What do you think about all this John?