i-way Consulting

e-business Planning, Consulting, Project Management, Training

The Australian Government's Spam Act 2003 takes effect on 10 April 2004. The Act has implications for every Australian organisation and its use of e-mail, SMS and other electronic messaging.

The Act covers only commercial electronic messages - eg. which offer a commercial transaction, or point to a location where a transaction can take place. The Act covers these messages if they originate (a) in Australia, or (b) overseas but are sent to an address accessed in Australia.

In the Act, spam is unsolicited commercial electronic messaging - this is a narrower meaning than usual! The Act declares spam is illegal: infringing organisations may face enforcement of the Act, and possibly financial penalties. The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) is responsible for enforcing the Act.

Your organisation relies on commercial e-mail, and other of electronic messaging.

How can you ensure your business complies with the Act? Follow 3 steps:

1. Consent Ensure the recipient has given consent to receive the message. Consent may be explicit, but can also be inferred from eg. a business relationship with the recipient.
2. Identification Ensure that your commercial messages contain clear and accurate identification and contact details of you, the sender.
3. Unsubscribe Ensure that your commercial messages contain an unsubscribe facility which enable a person to indicate they do not want to receive these messages. And act on these unsubscribe instructions!

For Australian originating spam, contact your ISP. Other reporting mechanisms will be set up and advised by the ACA.

For more detailed information about the Spam Act, and other spam resources, go to the i-way web site and click on the new Fight Spam page.

[ Home ] [ What's New ] [ About us ] [ Services ] [ Not For Profits ] [ Fight Spam ] [ Newsletter ] [ Where we are ] [ Inquiry ]

Copyright © 2005 i-way Consulting