A Belgian dating website known as nicepeople.be has been sued by its competitor, toietmoi.be for requiring anyone who registers with them to give e-mail addresses of 5 friends. These people are then spammed with invitations to join nicepeople.be. It is nice to know that your friends can sell out your e-mail addresses in exchange for a bit of fun on a dating site - NOT.

Nevertheless, applause goes to the Belgian court for convicting nicepeople.be of sending unsolicited e-mails and spamming these third parties' inboxes. Punishing them with a 10,000 EUR fine is a good start and indeed, it is high time precedence is set for these privacy law-breaking websites and the people behind them.

The only question is, is there any way of stopping your friends from throwing in your e-mail addresses and any other personal information to the wolves? We know that the data protection law does not cover handling of personal data in the course of household activities, but what can we truly consider as being a strictly household activity and where do we draw the line? If it were up to me, the law should apply to these friends as well.