Lee & White

About 75% of mail in Belgium is spam, usually associated with shady products or dodgy deals. But spam is just another word for unsolicited publicity mail - an email which you didn't ask for and which is completely useless to you or your business.

If you are sending out emails, be it just one email or in bulk, then consider very carefully if your email is going to be useful to the recipient. The best - and only legal - way is to actually have that recipient ask for the email in the first place - the opt-in. At any time the recipient must be able to revoke his request, and stop receiving further emails - the opt-out.

The law governing this is quite clear, the repercussions of not complying with that law aren't. In Belgium, BIPT - The Belgian Institute of Postal Services and Telecommunications - is concentrating on forcing ISPs - Internet Service Providers - to filter out unsolicited mail. BIPT confirms that they are unable to punish non-compliant ISP's. In any case, it is a useless exercise, as it only protects those companies or individuals who use the ISP's own email service. Those who use external email providers such as Gmail, Live or have their own email server are not benefiting from this.

Companies which send out unsolicited mail are neither targeted nor punished. In practice, the best that Belgium can do is to reprimand non-complying companies.

In the Netherlands, in a landmark case, Opta, the Dutch Independent Post and Telecoms Authority, reprimanded two companies and imposed a total of 510,000 euro fine for sending out unsolicited mail. This seems to be the highest fine ever imposed by Opta for spamming.

Belgium can certainly learn a lesson from its fellow EU member state.

"What's the big deal anyway?". A remark we hear very often when discussing personal data issues."Nothing to be concerned about, who would be interested in my personal data, and what can they do with it anyway?"