A Scottish man has been awarded £750 damages against a firm he claims spammed him. Gordon Dick, from Edinburgh, said “The courts have now sent a clear message, spam will not be tolerated and individuals’ rights to not have their mailbox filled with unsolicited advertising will be upheld.”
The firm in question, Transcom, failed to appear in court, but their director said that they do not send out spam, only an annual marketing mail to existing customers, from which they could easily unsubscribe. He said that Mr Dick had been an accidental recipient of an email because both he and Transcom belong to an email group operated by Nominet, the UK domain name registry.
It’s often said that – despite European legislation – it’s difficult to take any action against spammers, as so much spam originates in the US and in China. What this case does seem to illustrate is that hacked off recipients will go for the targets they *can* hit, and that may well mean British firms who are not careful enough about who receives their marketing email. If you’re running a mailing list for your website customers, you should make it opt-in only, and give recipients the opportunity to unsubscribe with every email. This is, of course, the advantage with eBay email marketing: all the opt-in and the opt-out is handled for you.
