Court Ruling Finds Major UK Retailer Guilty Of Sending Email Spam

[engine]

That's always a borderline case when you buy something from a company. They often use that as a way to send you e-mail, or phone calls, claiming that you have a relationship with them.

Opt-ins really need to be made clearer, and must be an option.

John Lewis has been ordered to pay damages for sending "spam" emails in a privacy ruling that could open the floodgates for harassed consumers.

Roddy Mansfield, who is a producer for Sky News, brought the case under EU legislation that prohibits businesses from sending marketing emails without consent.

At a county-court hearing a judge ruled the company acted unlawfully as it could not prove Mr Mansfield had agreed to receive the emails or was one of their customers.Court Ruling Finds Major UK Retailer Guilty Of Sending Email Spam [lbc.co.uk]

BTW, thanks to g1smd for the heads up on this.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Could open the floodgates.

[Samizdata]

The company said in a statement: "Mr Mansfield voluntarily gave us his email address, set up an account online and chose not to opt-out of marketing communications when that option was available to him".

The point being that he didn't explicitly choose to opt in, as EU law requires.

Pre-checked boxes fail in this area.

"John Lewis' lawyers then argued that because I browsed their website I had "negotiated" with them for a sale and a business relationship existed between us which would allow them to email me. The judge threw that out too."

This suggests that website Terms and Conditions might also fail.

It would be interesting to see if they were mentioned in the judgment.

...

[aakk9999]

Not just pre-checked boxes fail but also an empty box with wording "Tick if you wish not to receive marketing mails" also fail (which is on one of their other websites).

Basically - do nothing and you are opted in = fail the legislation.

[engine]

It's either bad advice given to the retailer by ignoring the law, or it's lack of knowledge.

This is an example, and I see it every day. I deal with it by having unique e-mail addresses. If I get spam, I just ditch the unique e-mail and let it bounce.

By publishing this story I hope that UK and European webmasters will realise they need to comply with the laws.

[lucy24]

If I get spam, I just ditch the unique e-mail and let it bounce.

It also tells you which online entities lie about not selling your address to others (a fairly minimal claim that surely everyone makes).