Privacy and eCommerce: Spam Butties

I am again indebted to vnunet.com for this item. According to Ken Young's article "UK firms flouting spam regulations", over a third of UK firms are flouting regulations on email privacy. The regulations concerned are The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 which implement Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications) ("the Telecomms Data Protection Directive").

The article complains that the Information Commissioner has never chased the spammers and the reason given for that reported by Ken Young is that many of the offenders appear to 
be based overseas. It is perhaps worth mentioning that there is a right of action under reg. 30 (1):

"A person who suffers damage by reason of any contravention of any of the requirements of these Regulations by any other person shall be entitled to bring proceedings for compensation from that other person for that damage."

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