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Pastimes : A Place For Spammers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbIII who wrote (12)	9/18/2000 11:34:17 AM
From: AugustWest	Respond to of 13

Mailtrack: Spam costs US GBP17 million a year, ISPs tell government SEP 18, 2000, M2 Communications - The UK ISP community has voiced its disappointment at the Government's decision not to regulate against unsolicited commercial email or spam - a problem that is estimated to cost the industry over GBP17 million a year. The Government's decision, following the European Union's Distance Selling Directive legislation, has left bodies such as the Direct Marketing Association responsible for industry self-regulation on commercial email. The difficulty is, the policy endorsed by the DMA, the principal adviser to the OFTEL Internet Forum which addressed the issue of commercial email, directly conflicts with the policy preferred by the Internet service provider community. The DMA endorses an opt-out policy, which means that its 4,600 members are able to send commercial email to consumers who have to proactively request that their email address be removed from any commercial email lists. Guy Marson, CEO of Mailtrack, a permission based opt-in marketing company, said: "They're taking a traditional approach to support opt-out which in the online world is tantamount to spam." To highlight the community's concern, Mailtrack conducted a poll of 180 UK ISPs which concluded that 98 per cent of them strongly favour an opt-in policy to the opt-out policy favoured by the DMA. This means consumers must give their permission before a company can send them a commercial email. The ISP community's stance has a groundswell of consumer support. According to new NOP research, 87 per cent of UK consumers find unsolicited commercial email unacceptable. In contrast, 48 per cent of consumers said they are willing to give their email address to a web site in order to receive targeted advertising on a subject of interest to them. At present, 62 per cent consumers who have access to email addresses at home - currently about 13.5 million people -receive some level of spam email. In the workplace, while spam is slightly less of a problem, 45 per cent workers who use email at work receive spam email. Richard Clayton, Chair of the London Internet Exchange (LINX) subcommittee combating spam, added: "ISPs are not in the least bit happy about delivering unsolicited email to customers. Besides clogging up our mail systems, the customers never wanted it in the first place and we then have to handle their complaints. We're totally in favour of opt-in and we take firm action to ensure that spammers do not use our systems to send their junk." In the last two months, many ISPs have begun building opt-in commercial email programmes into their portals. This allows consumers to register to receive commercial email on subjects they are interested in. Every email they receive through these programmes allows them to cancel the service. Notes to editor The research for this report was drawn from: * research conducted by NOP on internet usage in the UK (June 2000) * a report by Taylor Nelson Sofres on the cost of commercial email, commissioned by Mailtrack (September 2000) * an survey of 180 ISPs including LINX, Manap (Manchester Network Access Point), the ISP Consortium, Freeserve, BTinternet, Clara.net, Virgin, Kingston Internet/Telecom, Dircon, Demon and Pipex. Respondents were marketing directors or managing directors. (September 2000) Background on Mailtrack Founded in 1999, Mailtrack offers online marketers specialist customer acquisition and retention tools. Mailtrack currently has a partnership network made up of some of the UK's leading ISPs, portals and websites, who together reach over 1.7 unique email addresses, and is continuing to build relationships with other partners. For all campaigns, Mailtrack performs detailed tracking and response analysis to accurately determine effectiveness and to build user profiles. All Mailtrack products are 100% opt-in and permission based. -0- (C)1994-2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTDCONTACT: Felicity Campbell/Debbie Silton, Band & Brown Communications Tel: +44 (0)20 7419 7000 e-mail: debbie@bbpr.com ((M2 Communications Ltd disclaims all liability for information provided within M2 PressWIRE. Data supplied by named party/parties. Further information on M2 PressWIRE can be obtained at presswire.net on the world wide web. Inquiries to info@m2.com)). * end of story *