Warning for companies breaching email regulations

Daniel Farey-Jones, brandrepublic.com, Tuesday, 20 December 2005, 7:00am,

LONDON – A third of the UK's top 200 companies are not complying with email marketing legislation introduced two years ago, according to a new report.

Data and direct marketing services company CDMS, which carried out the study, urged companies to pay full attention to the legislation before enforcement test cases start to be launched.

The EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications became law in December 2003 and it requires that companies only send unsolicited sales messages via email to non-customers if they have actively opted in to receive them.

Ian Hubbard, director of CDMS, warned that companies which are not complying are putting out the message that they do not care about privacy legislation.

"This effectively puts them in the category of junk emailers," Hubbard said.

"At the very least, these companies need to put processes in place to stop the rot, and limit their current risk. In addition, there is a major forensic and clean-up job to be done on these companies' marketing databases."

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This article was first published on brandrepublic.com