New law to curb email & mobile spam

Singapore Parliament has passed a law to curb email and mobile spam.

Besides public education and industry efforts, Singapore needs the anti-spam law to discourage the proliferation of spam, said Lee Boon Yang, the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts.

The Spam Control Bill seeks to prevent local spammers from abusing direct marketing mechanisms. It sets out basic requirements for legitimate direct electronic mass marketing, and provides civil recourse for any affected persons against illegal spam with a Singapore link. A Singapore link exists when for instance the message originates in Singapore, or if the recipient of the message is physically in Singapore.

The Bill also makes it mandatory for senders to allow recipients to unsubscribe via the same medium through which the spam was received. This ensures that unsubscribing from spam can be done easily and conveniently by replying to an email or SMS.

According to a Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) survey in November 2003, email spam caused Singapore users about $23 million in productivity loss. The study further revealed that each of the three major local internet service providers (or ISPs) received close to 5,000 spam-related complaints a month. The users interviewed perceived email spam as the second most important concern after computer viruses.

Apart from email messages, the scope of the Spam Control Bill also covers SMS (Short Message Service) messages and MMS (multimedia Messaging Service) messages sent to a mobile telephone number.

The IDA study showed that four out of every five spam received locally originates overseas. Singapore laws would thus only have a limited effect in addressing this problem. However, by putting in place the spam control legislation, it would deter international spammers from exploiting Singapore's world-class telecommunications infrastructure as a base for spamming.