Ask HN: Will GDPR kill junk mail and email spam?

...in effect, yes it should because for you to have access to the email address would have required user opt-in. IMO, it'll likely be the end of volume based outbound email strategies in Europe.

I think resultantly the expenditure on inbound (e.g. ads) will increase, which will drive prices up, which will drive infrastructure investment in things like programmatic TV, and generally speaking more inbound channels.

If business was joint at the hip with advertising; it will be moreso after 25/05.

Spamming is illegal already. The people and organisations doing this don't care about the law.

So, no additional EU regulation will achieve anything in terms of email spam.

Due to inherent limitations of the protocols used for email it's also hard to identify and track down spammers, which is why authorities couldn't do a lot about it even if they wanted to (and most spammers weren't outside their jurisdiction anyway).

I think save for new email protocols that verify the identity of the sender unfortunately, spam is just a fact of modern life. Modern spam filters adequately deal with this problem.

Speaking of identity, there's another more eminent spam problem authorities actually could do something about but for one reason or another are oblivious to: Phone spam. Those automated or auto-dialed calls are really annoying (and harmful to those gullible enough to fall for whatever scheme is sold during the call) and there's not much you can do against them with reasonable effort yourself.

Authorities on the other hand could because in contrast to email addresses phone numbers are heavily regulated and the identity of the caller is usually known.

Junk mail is already more or less illegal in many countries - those that continue are fine with breaking the law so I don't think they will care about yet another law.