New bills have been introduced in the US to provide criminal
penalties for sending spam in certain circumstances and to prohibit
companies from tracking individual consumers as they browse
on-line.
The Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001, if
adopted, would make it an offence in the US "to intentionally
initiate the transmission of any unsolicited commercial e-mail
message with the knowledge that any domain name or other
identifying information of the sender is inaccurate".
The sending e-mail address must be obvious and recipients of
spam must be able to opt-out of receiving it.
The Consumer Online Privacy and Disclosure Act was introduced by
the same Congressman, Gene Green, at the end of last month. If
adopted, it would require web site operators to detail their
information and collection practices in a manner similar to the
requirements under European data protection laws.
Companies would also be prohibited from using “web bugs” or
“persistent cookies” without permission to track individual surfing
habits. In addition, companies could not sell their user databases
without permission from the users.
Numerous spam and privacy bills have been introduced in the US
but to date, only limited progress has been made.
