A penny for your thoughts ...

A penny for your thoughts ...

Image Copyright Forbes.com

I've had the same email address now for around 15 years. In that time I've emailed tens of thousands of people, registered for hundreds of site and products and subscribed for more updates than I can contemplate. This leaves me with the rather predictable problem that my inbox is a haven of spam communications for everything from the latest Nigerian inheritance scam to cheap Viagra.

I have a ritual which I do once a week to de-spam my email which I thought I would commit to this blog, you might find it useful if your having the same issues.

What does the law say?
The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 cover the sending of email marketing. This legislation says that organisations must only send marketing emails to individuals if you have agreed to receive them, except where there is a clearly defined customer relationship. Many spam emails come from outside the UK. The Information Commissioners Office can only investigate concerns about marketing emails from identifiable UK senders.

As a lot of spam comes from overseas, the Information Commissioner has an agreement with a number of overseas bodies to cooperate and exchange information to try and stop spam emails that are sent from those places.

Email Client

I use Microsoft Outlook to read my email. Over the years it has become pretty good on the spam filtering front, but I still have a couple of tactics for limiting what's getting into the inbox:

- Invest some time to set up the spam filters in some detail. If the filters are well thought out then most of the spam will not get through to the inbox.

- Create a dummy email address just for the purposes of subscribing to things or getting free trials. If its something you want to continue with then you can change the email address to your main one later.

- Never unsubscribe from a spam email. All it does is validate your email address to the spammers.

- Never forward a spam email on to friends or colleagues, this also validates your email address and exposes your friends to the same spam.

Bill Gates - A penny for your thoughts?

As far back as 2004 Bill Gates - the founder of Microsoft - had foreseen spam email as a major issue. He once speculated the idea that it should cost one penny to send an email. He described this as "buying a stamp" for each email.  This would eradicate spam overnight, the spammers couldn't fund sending spam email, even at a penny. They typically generate half a billion emails a day. Its not a workable idea, business would object to the levy and collecting it is not realistic. I always thought that the money generated should go to charity or other good causes, get rid of spam and do some good all in the same go.

The other benefit of this idea would have been that people would think more carefully about the amount of email they send, the trivial emails with little or no value would also disappear, thereby lessening the amount of low value generic email hitting your inbox.

What can I do if I'm getting unwanted emails?
If you receive marketing by email that you don’t want from an identifiable and legitimate UK based company that you know and trust, you should first use the ‘unsubscribe’ link or email the organisation to ask them to stop (remembering to keep a copy of any correspondence). Tell the sender about the problem and allow them time to put things right. Legitimate, well-known companies will offer opt-outs, and in many cases things can be resolved quickly without us getting involved.

If you continue to receive unsolicited marketing emails despite following this course of action, then you may wish to report your concerns to the ICO.