Every morning I get an unsolicited email from www.mydala.com offering me a Samsung Galaxy for Rs 99 and as usual I have to trash it out.
At the footer, there exists an interesting legal disclaimer
| Disclaimer: Since India has no anti-spamming law, we follow the US directive passed in Bill 1618 Title III by the 105th US Congress, which states that mail cannot be considered spam if it contains contact information, which this mail does.
|
FYI never signed up on Mydala.com or subscribed to their mailers. Infact the first time I paid a visit to this site was today and that too for unsubscribing from its mailer.
Now several questions cascade in my mind
1. Does this law give someone the right to pick my email address at random and bombard me with worthless marketing promotions? In US this law came to effect in 2003 See Here, but was never enforced. This law is also known as ‘You-can-SPAM ‘ act providing a legal umbrella to the spammers.
2. How does a law in United States give the legality to SPAMMING in India? Put in other terms, someone can organize Live Pornography in India, just because it is legal in some countries.
3. The law (as stated somewhere) says that it requires a Physical Address, Email Address and Phone Number for transmission on unsolicited commercial material. Since this email had no physical address, so it fails to abide by even the US which it claims so far.
4. It contained a phone number +91-11-43444444 as contact option. How can I remain assured that the sender is the legitimate holder of this phone number (just to ensure that it fully abides by so called US Anti-Spam Laws)? Of Course, I am not going to call this number and waste my money
This way, can I legalize any SPAM email by putting any fake contact options in it.
4. What if I pick up the emails of every Who’s Who of Mydala.com and send this email with the same disclaimer?
While I refer here to Mydala.com, I have been constantly victimized by many other similar mailers in the category of Retail, Deals, and Jobs. Even well known portals like BharatMatrimony.com continue to SPAM even after multiple un-subscription request.
Thanks to Gmail’s Anti SPAM technology which prevents 90% of SPAM from featuring in my inbox. And I follow a strict practice of reporting such mailers as SPAM to the Gmail Team.
The question is do we need a Anti-SPAM Law like in US. If such a law comes, can it be enforced properly. Would it be effective enough as envisaged?
Or, do we require a regulation like Do- Not- Disturb Service as in SMS Marketing?
Sarang Lakare
My two cents on this. No laws are going to prevent this. The viable, simple, but a bit long-term solution to this is to define your relationships with people, businesses, associations, etc., and only see emails from those you are connected with. We are building IntouchId for precisely this reason: to allow you to control your contact information and who/where/when can communicate with you. It is a spam-free way to connect with a business and get communication from them. Stop the communication whenever you like, without ever giving out your email. Check us out: https://theIntouchId.com . Your IntouchId is a public number that others can use to establish connection with you. Only when you approve can the other person or business communicate with you. Please do give your feedback!
Sarang
Abey John
Report them as spam if you are using hotmail, google, yahoo. That will kill them eventually. Report every mail of theirs as spam since you are getting it unsolicited. What happens is mydala hires a bunch of sleazy marketers (with big names) who go out and scrap the web for email addresses. Typically mydala also will not be aware of the danger they are in. Eventually they will enter on the ISP (google, yahoo, hotmail primarily) blacklist with these practices.
Abhishek Bharadwaj
u r right Abey,… In one of the interesting incidents, when I clicked the Unsubscribe Link , it prompted that my email was not at all registered in the mailing list 🙂