KEY POINTS:
Anti-spam legislation has not worked, says an Auckland email specialist.
Jerry Flay, of email marketing firm Inbox believes that there are ways to combat the rising tide of spam, but the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act is not one of them.
The Act, which came into force on September 5 meant spammers could face fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the law only covers New Zealand, and the vast bulk of spam comes from overseas.
"Anyone who says anything other than 'it's not working' has their head stuck in the sand," Flay told nzherald.co.nz today.
"When it was conceived, during the revision process and right up to it becoming legislation, the whole point was to diminish the volume of spam that New Zealanders are subjected to. In that respect, it has failed absolutely.
"In terms of it ensuring that New Zealand doesn't become a safe haven for spammers it has worked - but has also proved that there aren't really any spammers in New Zealand."
Flay sees email suffering as a business tool and form of communication in New Zealand unless measures are taken to protect it from the wide-reaching Act.
His suggestion is a combination of authentication and a national whitelist adopted by ISPs to ensure that legitimate email users aren't disadvantaged by the legislation.
Last week, many recipients of a Fish and Game newsletter using Xtra's troubled and much-criticised email Bubble service, discovered that it had been sucked up with a spam filter amongst ads for discount Viagra and Nigerian cash scams.
But not only had these recipients all had opted to receive the newsletter, they had actually paid for it as part of their licensing fees.
Many subscribers to mailing lists have found themselves trawling through over-stuffed Junk mailboxes to find information that they have actually requested - others have found the information simply hasn't turned up at all.
Flay says that the whitelist approach - which has proven effective overseas - will bring the power of email back to the desktop, while keeping foreign spam out of the picture.
"Email is an industry that is best self-regulated," he says, "and Xtra, as the country's largest ISP, must play a leading role."
