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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

As somebody who has hated spam for years, I can only wish that I were in the EU.

There is a whole swathe of companies that is somewhere between casual and negligent with email addresses, and it would be my distinct pleasure to have a stick like GDPR to beat them with.

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The good news is there's going to be at least some echo effect here. I work for a US based company, although the vast majority of our users are in Asia. We're implementing GDPR for everyone. It won't affect the companies that exist solely to spam you much, but for most companies the technical issues of ONLY implementing this in the EU are simply too great.

So everyone will get at least some benefit. But ya, it'd be great if other governments took this as seriously.

I feel like it's also the case for many companies that they'd like to implement GDPR-like tools for users, but as long no one is paying them to do so it's a waste of time. GDPR is a nice excuse to build that functionality and roll it out to all your users.

Spammers don’t tend to operate from first-world jurisdictions. (When they do, CAN-SPAM is decent about requiring working unsubscribe buttons). Spam is not a problem you can solve with regulation.

Sure, I don’t expect to stop receiving invitations to enlarge my genitals in my spam folder because of GDPR, but I’ll be happy enough if it discourages dodgy online shops and growth-hacky startups from automatically signing me up to their mailing list because I made a one-off transaction and “consented” to receive their special offers for all eternity on page 25 of their terms and conditions.

Oh, I wouldn't expect it to solve the spam problem. But as I said, there are a lot of US-based companies that are at best sloppy with address management. Those are also the ones most likely to make it past my existing filters, because they are semi-legitimate. Being able to turn up the heat on them would be a pleasure.

Mostly true, but I would say that - while regulation certainly shouldn't be the primary tool used to fight spam, it can help discourage bad behavior within a jurisdiction, and can reduce spam load a bit. Mostly by secondary effects (e.g., an email service provider says to their customers, "here's the legal standard, we need you to adhere to this").

No, that annoys me the most, that I have to go and click the unsubscribe button and wait for the page to load and then click another button. They should have not sent me the email in the first place.

If the spammers are pushing some product that is sold online or sold in the "first world," they certainly could be attacked with regulation.

Most of promotional email I get is from local businesses operating in my own town. And each time I unsubscribe it feels like my email gets handed over to the next mailing list of a similar business. Recurring topic is "art galleries" and "event venues". I'm pretty sure GDPR can help with that. And, also, possibly related to GDPR: I already got couple emails asking to confirm I want to continue receiving emails. Chances are this is related to building the verified opt-in list this article mentions.

There are 2 kinds of spam:

* Nigerian scam type spam

* ads/commercial spam

The first is already illegal, and yes, it's difficult to fight and comes from first world jurisdictions.

But the second is operated by well known companies, most of the time through well known service providers (Salesforce, Adobe...). And these companies do put a lot of personal information in their databases (what did you buy, did you click on a specific link, did you open a specific email, etc).

Spam is a problem that can only be fixed by Tony Soprano types.

But the government probably wouldn't like that very much.

Sorry to break it to you, but having live both in EU, and now in the US, I still got more email spam from France.

Laws like this are broad and overreaching, but they are rarely enforced.

GDPR has much higher punishments for breaking it than previous EU privacy laws. Many companies are taking the legislation seriously due to this. I expect GDPR to be actually useful in moving the line for privacy.

For these kinds of violations, fines can be "up to €20 million, or 4% of the worldwide annual revenue of the prior financial year, whichever is higher"

https://www.gdpreu.org/compliance/fines-and-penalties/

The GDPR won't be implemented for another month and a half.

GDPR is active now. It has been for almost two years.

It is just now becoming enforced (with all its sanctions), after the two-year transition period.

That's why people only start caring now, at the very last minute. There's a difference between a law on paper, and a law with attached consequences, so I still expect meaningful change after May 25th.

Yes, the EU regulation, but the actual laws are not active.

Have you complained to the regulator? I'm not in France, but it has generally worked for me.

Today, I requested assistance from the authority for the first time.

And I’m eager to see how my request will be handled.

Do you have any suggestion? You seem pretty accustomed to it.

Which authority specifically? My experience is with two Portuguese regulators (one of Data Protection, other of Telecommunications). The first was pretty good, the second required a bit of insistence to prevent them from closing the matter after the company sent a reply that said nothing, but both worked out with nothing more than a few emails.

With the Italian Data Protection authority. http://gpdp.it

I wanted to know if emails are enough, but you already answered that. I'll need to test how numerically "a few" is.

My fear is that the process will take too much effort, it would be useless if rules were not enforced.

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is a fine stick, easy to handle, and packs an up to ~$40,000 punch for EACH violation.

I happily reference the FTC documentation of this act whenever I see spam coming in after having unsubscribed. Funny, I can’t seem to recall any instance where the spam then continued...

You must not get Azure emails.

> We've added new features to Azure! Read this advertisement!

> ...

> This message from Microsoft is an important part of a program, service, or product that you or your company purchased or participates in. Microsoft respects your privacy.

> [Lack of unsubscribe intensifies]

The three dots you omitted actually have this relevant text:

To customize what's included in this email, who gets it, or to unsubscribe, set your Message center preferences. If you are receiving this email because your Admin added you as a recipient, please contact your Admin to unsubscribe.

Microsoft respects your privacy. To learn more, please read our Privacy Statement.

No, they don't. The closest thing is:

> Note: As an Azure customer, you are receiving this email because we are required to notify you of product changes that may affect your subscription. This is the only communication that you will receive directly from Microsoft regarding these product changes.

Seems like they're required by law to spam you. Of course they're going to at least use it for something worthwhile at the same time.

It's actually

>This message from Microsoft is an important part of a program, service, or product that you or your company purchased or participates in. Microsoft respects your privacy. Please read our Privacy Statement.

with no option to unsubscribe

Weird. The above is quote from the Office 365 Message. I only have very old Azure messages as I have unsubscribed from the mail.

Just to make it clear - I'm not working for Microsoft or anything like that.

Is there a direct link to the relevant part of their website to actually do that? If not, then it's not good enough.

Yes, there is. The words "set your Message center preferences" are a link.

they dont. Unsuscribe link behind a login wall suck.

Speaking in the larger context, this stick you feel you've been given comes at a high price. Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before the powers that be will fashion a stick with which to beat you, too.

What is that price? That I can't be cavalier with user data? I'm just fine with that.

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