MediaCo was recently
commissioned to author a factsheet on UK Email Legislation for Scottish Enterprise.
It covers the new
regulations which came into force in the UK in December 2003 in a bid to reduce
the problem of Spam - or Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE).
The full factsheet
can be downloaded from:
http://www.scottish-enterprise.com/factsheets/
An extract
covering the key points ...
Best Practice
While
the UK email legislation doesn't prohibit sending unsolicited commercial email
to business email addresses, that can be something of a grey area. This is also
because often a personal address and a business address can be the same.
Therefore,
here is a summary of best practice to help you to work within the law and retain
good relationships with your email recipients:
-
All
email addresses (work or home) should be considered to be personal data.
-
If
email addresses are to be used for marketing purposes, this should be clearly
stated at the point of collection.
-
Once informed, the user should be able to refuse permission for their email to
be used for marketing purposes (ie opt-out).
-
If email is to be sent to those with whom a customer relationship exists, the
content should be in reference to similar products and services.
-
If the email addresses are to be shared with third parties, this should be clearly
stated at the point of collection.
-
Email addresses should not be harvested (eg copied from websites) and used for
marketing purposes without the recipients' knowledge.
-
Recipients should be able to refuse permission for further marketing messages
to be sent to them at any time.
-
Your identity as the sender should never be disguised or concealed.
-
In every communication, recipients must be given a simple and clear means
of opting out from receiving future emails.
-
When an opt-out request is received it must be honoured, with the contact details
ideally being "suppressed" rather than deleted.
