Dealing with Unsolicited Commercial Emails: A Global Perspective

mail marketing is a simple and cost-effective marketing tool used to boost traffic, promote direct marketing offers, announce a new product or service, and increase revenues. Emarketers may use cheap medium to market thousands of online users at the same time, including the ones who do not wish to be solicited. A recent spam study, conducted by pollster Ipsos-Reid, determined that spam now represents, on average, more than half of all email messages that Internet users get. The exponential growth of spam is affecting consumer confidence in the Internet and may hamper the growth of e-commerce. According to a recent survey published by consumers group Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, 52 percent of respondents are shopping less on the Internet or not at all because of concerns about receiving spam. Unsolicited commercial emails (or spam), considered a form of privacy violation, has become a major problem for legitimate businesses, Email Service Providers (ESPs), Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and online users that have undertaken various initiatives in an attempt to curb spam. ESP Microsoft's MSN Hotmail is now imposing rate limits on daily email usage. Many ISPs, such as AOL and EarthLink, have undertaken lawsuits in an attempt to discourage spammers. Spam can to a certain extent be fought by using anti-spam software, although a consequence of using anti-spam