E-mail ads from Singapore firms to allow users to ‘unsubscribe’
Singapore – Companies in Singapore sending e-mail advertisements will have to tag their messages with an “ADV” label and allow e-mail users to unsubscribe from the messages starting next Friday. Under the new law aimed at curtailing unsolicited commercial electronic messages, those who continue to send spam to people who have opted out will face penalties of 25 Singapore dollars (16 US dollars) for each message, up to a total of 1 million Singapore dollars (658,000 US dollars).
E-mail spam costs users in the city-state 23 million Singapore dollars (15.1 million US dollars) in productivity losses, parliament was told when it passed the Spam Control Act.
Some sceptics have questioned the effectiveness of the law given that 80 per cent of spam originates from overseas, The Straits Times said.
“Without an international effort to control spam, there’s very little that end users here can do,” project manager Edward Chong was quoted as saying.