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1st June 2002
Global Internet Community Applauds European Anti-Spam Vote
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE), EuroCAUCE, CAUCE India, CAUCE Canada and the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk E-Mail, Australia (CAUBE.au) today applauded the decision by the European Parliament to protect European Internet users from thepractice of unsolicited e-mail advertisements. Yesterday's vote will turn Europe into a virtual "spam-free zone" after the formal adoption of the directive, making it illegal to send unsolicited e-mail, text message or other similar advertisements to individuals with whom companies do not have a preexisting business relationship.
"This is a tremendous day for European Internet users," said EuroCAUCE Chairman George Mills. "We are extremely pleased that the European Parliament has listened to the citizens of its member countries and added the right to be left alone by spammers to its efforts to protect the privacy of Europeans."
While six European Union member countries had already formalised "opt-in" in their national laws and regulations, yesterday's vote should turn all of Europe into a spam-free zone by the end of 2003.
"Unfortunately, the rest of the world's Internet-using countries, including the United States, now lags behind Europe in their protection of Internet users," said CAUCE Chairman Scott Hazen Mueller. "This is a tremendous first step, but the rest of the world now needs to follow Europe's lead and unite behind protection of Internet users and network owners from abusive and costly unsolicited e-mail advertising."
"This decision is the direct result of Internet users throughout the European Union standing up for their rights, and Members of the European Parliament listening to their constituents," said Mills. "Our members and our volunteers performed an integral part of this process, translating, lobbying and educating their representatives."
More information on the E.U. directive is available on the European Parliament's Web site <http://www.europarl.eu.int/press/index_en.htm>, and a EuroCAUCE analysis is available at <http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/amendments1a.html>. More information on the international CAUCE network of affiliate organizations is available at <http://www.cauce.org>.
21st December 2001
CAUBE.AU Explains Online Marketing Obligations After December 21st
CAUBE.AU, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia, today released a brochure describing the marketing related obligations of online businesses imposed by the changes to the Privacy Act which came into effect today.
"There has been some confusion in the business community regarding exactly what the Act requires for marketing," said Troy Rollo, who chairs CAUBE.AU. "This brochure explains in clear terms what online businesses need to be doing in order to comply with the marketing provisions, and also explains how the marketing provisions create these requirements."
The brochure can be downloaded from the CAUBE.AU website at <http://www.caube.org.au/business.htm>.
18th May 2000
Anti Spam Organisation Gives Thumbs Up to Best Practice Model
CAUBE.AU, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia, today gave the thumbs up to the federal government's new best practice model for electronic commerce, which Joe Hockey, Minister for Financial Services and Regulation, launched at the Sydney offices of the Australian Consumers Association this morning.
"This model is a great step forward in the fight against spam. For the first time in Australia, we have a government statement that clearly says 'No, spam is not OK'," said Troy Rollo, Chairman of CAUBE.AU. The best practice model is intended to be a guideline for self regulation in the area of electronic commerce, and the next step is for industry bodies to adjust their codes in line with the new guidelines.
The provisions of the code that deal with spam are clear and concise - Businesses should not send commercial email without prior permission except to people with whom they have an existing relationship, and businesses should have simple procedures for consumers to be removed from lists, even if they have previously asked for commercial email or have a relationship with the business.
1st March 2000
CAUBE.AU Calls on Minister to Reject Opt-Out Recommendation
CAUBE.AU, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia, has called on the Minister for Financial Services and Regulation, Joe Hockey, M.P., to reject a recommendation to define opt-out as the best practice for email advertising.
The recommendation has been made as part of an e-commerce report by Consumer Affairs, a division of the Federal Treasury. The report has not been made public, but CAUBE.AU has been informed that it recommends that Government policy specify an opt-out approach to email advertising to become the standard for industry codes of practice in Australia.
Early last year, the Internet Industry Association came under fire internationally for introducing a code of practice which took a similar approach to the one outlined in the report. Some sites outside Australia reacted by placing bans on all mail coming from Australian domain names. A similar policy from the Government could be expected to have similar but larger negative results for Australia.
"Opt-out is an approach that has long been discredited as making the problem worse, not better – doing nothing at all would be preferable to opt-out," said Troy Rollo, Chairman of CAUBE.AU. "What’s more, this recommendation is targeted at mainstream businesses, and if we are telling the world that we think opt-out spamming is OK, those businesses are going to lose sales, because overseas buyers will be less inclined to trust Australian vendors."
There have been numerous surveys into the opinions of consumers on spam which have clearly shown that consumers want opt-in regulation, and a recent small scale survey commissioned by E-Commerce Today found that of 10 major E-Commerce companies in Australia, 9 believed that there should be some legislation enforcing opt-in for email advertising. The results of that survey have been published in E-Commerce Today’s new E-Mail Handbook for Business.
"I don’t know where the government thinks the support is coming from for an opt-out approach," said Rollo, "Consumers don’t support it, Internet Service Providers don’t support it, and reputable online businesses don’t support it – the Government shouldn’t be supporting it either."
29th February 2000
Action Alert
CAUBE.AU has issued its first Action Alert. We have been informed that subsequent to the consultation on spam, the Treasury has made a recommendation to the minister to take a strictly opt-out approach to the spam problem.
4th February 2000
Treasury - Consultation on Spam
CAUBE.AU has made a submission to the Treasury consultation on the issue of spam and its relevance to the document "Building Consumer Confidence In E-Commerce: A Best Practice Model For Business." (Consumer Affairs falls under the Treasury Department at the federal level).
9th September 1999
Telstra BigPond Direct Spams its Customers
On Wednesday, Telstra BigPond Direct apparently did something many people thought unthinkable. They sent a spam to their customers.
Businesses using spam for advertising is an unfortunately common practice, but when an organisation which should know better, such as BigPond Direct - whose primary business is Internet services - spams its customers, it demonstrates that something serious is going wrong.
The spam was sent by landryf@bigpond.com from an IP address allocated for the use of BigPond Direct, touting a new BigPond service. It is unclear how the spam was addressed, as the "To" field contained the same email address as the "From" field - which is a common trait of spam. It appears it may have been sent to the contact addresses used for weekly statistics on customers' bandwidth usage.
Telephone calls to the telephone number listed in the spam, and attempts to contact BigPond Direct via its standard contact addresses did not get a response from BigPond.
BigPond Direct, also known as Telstra Internet, have also recently come under fire in USENET news for what some perceive as a policy of harbouring spammers. There have been calls for BigPond Direct itself to be added to the Realtime Blackhole List - a service that many ISPs use to block mail from sources known to be friendly to spam.
In recent months, BigPond Direct's spam reporting address delivered an auto-response suggesting that people use the remove instructions in individual spams. Spam fighters have regularly stated that not only is this ineffective, some spammers use remove requests to build up more valuable lists of people who actually read their email, and sell those lists to other spammers at a premium price. By using the removal instructions for spam with brand new addresses created for the purpose of testing this theory, spam fighters have reported that those addresses have become the target of spam.
Curiously, the spam from BigPond Direct did not even have any sort of removal instructions. The failure to provide such instructions would be a clear violation of the new draft Internet Industry Association Code of Practice. John Rolland, head of Telstra's Internet services, is on the board of the Internet Industry Association.
Troy Rollo, chairman of CAUBE.AU, The Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia, said "If this spam came from BigPond Direct as it claims, there is something seriously out of whack with management there. It suggests that Australia's largest ISP is either unaware of the issues surrounding spam, or simply doesn't care, and there is no way for an ISP who has been keeping in touch with the rest of the industry to not know the significance of the issue."
12th July 1999
Anti-Spam Organisations Praise Canadian Court Decision Upholding "Netiquette"
CAUBE.AU, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia, joined international spam fighting organisations in praising the decision of a Canadian court to uphold the long-standing rules of Netiquette.
The Superior Court of Ontario recently released its decision in "1267623 Ontario Inc. v. Nexx Online Inc.," a case in which a disconnected spammer sued its ISP to force reinstatement of its spammed-for Web site. The judgement, which breaks new legal ground in Canada, found that Nexx Online was within its rights to disconnect a Web site that was advertised in spammed messages.
"The ruling is the first by a court which directly addresses the acceptability of spamming on the Internet, and it says clearly that spamming is unacceptable, anti-social behaviour," said Troy Rollo, chairman of CAUBE.AU.
The judge's decision rested on a clause in Nexx's Acceptable Use Policy stating, "The Account Holder agrees to follow generally accepted "Netiquette" when sending e-mail messages or posting newsgroup messages..." In her decision, the judge found that spamming was, in fact, a violation of Netiquette, basing her decision in part on an essay by CAUCE Board member John Levine laying out the costs associated with spam. CAUBE.AU is the Australian affiliate of CAUCE, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email.
The judge also noted that Nexx's upstream provider, Exodus Communications, had a clear anti-spam policy in place to which Nexx had agreed.
"This ruling makes clear that anti-abuse provisions in the 'upstream' can govern the behavior of those on the 'downstream' end of an Internet connection," noted CAUCE Counsel and Co-Founder Ray Everett-Church.
"That's a very logical inference from the contracts, but it is nonetheless helpful to have a court reinforce what we've always counted on."
CAUCE applauds the ruling, and hopes other ISPs will continue to craft and enforce aggressive Acceptable Use Policies against spam.
"While the ruling won't replace the need for a well-crafted service contract, it certainly makes clear that customers can find themselves booted offline if they act in ways that cause damage or bring ill-repute to a service provider," Everett-Church added.
24th June 1999
CAUBE.AU Launches Spam Free Mall
In a world's first, CAUBE.AU, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia, today launched an online shopping mall with a difference – it only lists vendors who are willing to state that they will not spam their customers.
The Spam Free Mall is available as a free service to both merchants and consumers at http://spamfreemall.caube.org.au/, and already contains 26 merchants selected based on extensive research of hundreds of online stores. Other merchants can apply to be listed using an application form on the Spam Free Mall web site, but a prerequisite to applying is that the merchant participates in the CAUBE.AU Merchant Logo Program, which was launched a week ago.
The Spam Free Mall makes it easy for consumers to find merchants who won’t spam their customers. "There is a clear need for this service for both consumers and merchants," said Troy Rollo, chairman of CAUBE.AU. "Right now, many consumers are holding back from purchasing online due to fear of being spammed. It can be difficult and time consuming to find vendors that promise not to spam, and even if you can find one that does promise not to spam, our research for the Spam Free Mall showed that merchants sometimes define spam differently to consumers."
A study by Cognitiative, Inc., revealed earlier this year that the fear of being spammed by merchants they deal with is a significant factor in the decision of many people not to buy online.
By making participation in the CAUBE.AU Merchant Logo Program a prerequisite to applying for a listing in the Spam Free Mall, CAUBE have ensured that the promise being made by listed vendors will be consistently consumer friendly.
17th June 1999
Anti-Spam Group Announces Logo Programs
CAUBE.AU, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE), Australia, today announced two logo programs designed to identify, encourage and reward responsible Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and online merchants.
The first logo program identifies Internet Service Providers that have anti-spam Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) and enforce those policies. This can be an important issue to consumers choosing an ISP, because an ISP that does not have and enforce a strong AUP can find its email being rejected. System administrators may configure their systems to reject email from an ISP in a number of ways – including manually blocking sites that they have had problems with, or using one or more of the centralised black-lists of sites contributing to the spam problem. Such black-lists include the Realtime Blackhole List (RBL), the Open Relay Behaviour-modification System (ORBS), and the Internet Mail Relay Services Survey (IMRSS).
The second logo program identifies online merchants that are willing to state unambiguously that they will not spam their own customers. Making a clear statement on this issue has clear benefits for both merchants and consumers. It is something that consumers are demanding, and something that merchants need in order to avoid losing sales to the suspicion that they might spam their customers.
The latest edition of "Pulse of The Customer", a quarterly study by Cognitiative, Inc., revealed that consumers are not only fed up with being spammed by people they don’t know, but have had enough of being spammed by merchants they have purchased from. In fact it found that consumer sentiment was so strong on this that as many as 32% of customers will refuse to ever purchase from the spamming vendor again.
The study also showed that many consumers now avoid giving email addresses to merchants for fear of being spammed by them. Since online vendors may need to contact a customer to convey order status information, they need that email address to complete the transaction. Even vendors that won’t spam their customers are losing business because consumers feel that their trust has already been violated, and that this violation of trust has become an unavoidable cost of buying on the net.
Privacy policies have often been touted as a means to regain trust. Unfortunately, privacy policies are frequently lengthy documents that consumers don’t have time to read, and even if the consumer does have time to read the privacy policy of a web site, they are often highly ambiguous on the issue of spam. Even if the privacy policy says, in so many words "we won’t spam you", some merchants use highly dubious definitions of the word "spam" that attempt to exclude unsolicited marketing to their customers from being labelled as spam.
A merchant that displays the CAUBE.AU Merchant Logo makes a clear and unambiguous promise to its customers. Consumers who see the logo will know instantly that they can trust the merchant with their email address, and will know the exact extent of the promise that the merchant is making.
The CAUBE.AU Merchant Logo Program provides the best opportunity yet for online merchants to win back the trust of consumers who are no longer buying online for fear of being spammed.
18th February 1999
Australian Spam Fighting Group Gains International Recognition
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia (CAUBE.AU) has gained recognition overseas since its announcement of its formation this week.
CAUBE.AU has been welcomed to the international spam fighting community by both the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) in the United States, and by EuroCAUCE in Europe, as well as by individual spam fighters abroad.
CAUBE.AU’s web page has also been acknowledged as a good source of information for businesses. The "For businesses" web page provides information to business people on how the issue of UBE affects them, and what they need to do to avoid angering their customers. One poster to the USENET newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email said "I particularly liked http://www.caube.org.au/business.htm, which describes how to get 90% of people filling out a form at your site to opt-in to your mailings."
14th February 1999
CAUBE.AU announces its formation
CAUBE.AU, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE), Australia, announced its formation today.
CAUBE.AU is an all-volunteer organisation which exists to represent the interests of Australian Internet users on the issue of Unsolicited Bulk Email, commonly known as email spam. Membership of CAUBE.AU is open to any person in Australia who shares CAUBE.AU's opposition to spam.
CAUBE.AU plans to represent the interests of Internet users through public education and through influencing industry and legislative policy in areas involving unsolicited bulk email.
"A central Australian voice for community opposition to unsolicited bulk email is long overdue. Until now, those opposed to this practice in Australia have been represented only by individuals, who on their own can hold little to no influence over the actions of others," said Troy Rollo, chairman of CAUBE.AU.
"Furthermore, if you needed access to informed opinion on opposition to UBE, you had nobody to turn to. This has resulted in some disastrous decisions, such as the Internet Industry Association's recent rules on UBE, which were introduced in December and mirrored proposed legislation which was rejected by the United States Congress three months earlier because it would make the UBE problem significantly worse.
"While the IIA has recognised the problems with the new rules and has suspended them, those new rules were a significant step backwards from their previous position which stated that no subscriber to the code may engage in UBE. Until the provisions were suspended on Thursday, Australia had the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world where there was an Internet Industry code of practice which guaranteed every potential advertiser at least one shot at your electronic mailbox."
When Internet users recently found out about the IIA's code and its provisions on spamming, some sites outside of Australia reacted by placing bans on all mail with an Australian domain name. Rich Tietjens, former administrator of the "Spambusters" web site, said "Australia is angling to become the world's largest intranet. If that's what they want, fine by me. I'll miss exchanging email with my Ozzie friends, but I'm not gonna die from it."
UBE, also known as "spam", is a widely despised advertising practice on the Internet because it costs the sender almost nothing to send, it imposes costs on the recipient both in terms of money and time, and there is no way for the recipient to control the type or quantity of UBE that they receive.
CAUBE.AU's role in Australia mirrors the role of CAUCE in the United States, and EuroCAUCE in Europe.
CAUBE.AU's web site is available at http://www.caube.org.au/.