Clearswift Poll Reveals Most Businesses Still In The Dark Over Spam Laws

Legislation not supporting businesses anti-spam efforts

London, UK – May 5th, 2004: More than 83 per cent of businesses are ignorant of anti-spam legislation and nearly all who are aware of the laws believe they are inadequate, according to the 2004 Spam Monitor survey undertaken by Clearswift, the MIMEsweeper company.

The Clearswift poll, conducted online in association with TRUSTe, the nonprofit privacy certification and seal program, received responses from more than 1,200 businesspeople from around the world. It showed that while only 16 per cent of organisations were aware of legislation against spam in their country, a resounding 92.5 per cent of those firms believed the laws were inadequate.

While some businesses believed laws needed to be stronger, the spam survey found many were unknowingly contributing to the spam problem themselves. Forty-four per cent of companies surveyed said they used email for marketing purposes, however only 16 percent rated their company’s knowledge of the legal implications of email marketing as ‘high’, with most (48 per cent) rating their knowledge as ‘low’. Forty-six per cent of respondents said the legal obligations of email marketing were not communicated to the marketing department.

The overall lack of knowledge of spam legislation among businesses meant many had fallen foul of regulations with a massive 84 per cent admitting they had been ‘blacklisted’ – prevented by ISPs from sending email altogether or to particular domains – for sending spam.

Despite the low knowledge of spam legislation within businesses, 41 per cent said they would be prepared to take legal action against spammers.

“It is clear there needs to be greater education on spam legislation by governments around the world, as businesses are on the one hand complaining about the problem of spam, but at the same time, appear to be contributing to the problem themselves because of ignorance,” Clearswift director of research, Alyn Hockey, said.

“It is almost comical that most organisations do not know the implications of spam legislation on their email marketing practices yet a significant number are prepared to sue one another. It’s a case of pots calling kettles black.

“While Clearswift believes anti-spam legislation can be strengthened, if organisations became more aware of the current laws they would contribute to reducing the spam problem.”

The 2004 Clearswift Spam Monitor survey is based on the input of 1,260 professionals at middle to senior IT management level who participated in an online study commissioned by Clearswift in October 2003. The survey is representative of a cross-section of industry sectors and geographies. The largest groups of respondents were based in the USA, UK, Australia, France and Germany. Responses were received from 45 countries in all. Respondents worked in small, medium and large organisations – 38.7 per cent worked in organisations of fewer than 50 people, 18 per cent in organisations of between 50 and 500 people, 5.5 percent in organisations of between 500 and 1,000 people and 30.3 per cent worked in organisations with more than 1,000 people.

About Clearswift

Clearswift simplifies content security.

Our products help organizations enforce best-practice email and web use, ensuring all traffic complies with internal policy and external regulations.

Our range of content filtering solutions makes it easy to deploy, manage and maintain no-compromise email and web security for both inbound and outbound traffic.

Clearswift is the only vendor to offer comprehensive, policy-based content security in all three deployment methods: as software, as an appliance and as a managed service.

All three platforms are designed to take the hassle out of securing internet traffic, with a clear, intuitive management interface; automatic, 'zero-touch' updates; powerful reporting and common-sense policy management.

Twenty years of experience across 17,000 organizations has helped us raise security standards while simplifying security management at the same time.

We've helped many of the world's most successful organizations use the internet with confidence and are committed to staying ahead of the market and helping our customers defend against all emerging threats.

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