Spamming Fine Quashed

A case that made headlines recently, when a sender of spam emails was fined £300,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office, has come back to court.



The somewhat surprising result is that the Upper Tribunal (UT) decided that the actions of the spammer, who was sending 800,000 emails daily, did not warrant a fine.



Although the volumes of spam emails certainly would constitute an annoyance for their unwilling recipients, the UT concluded that they were not likely to cause substantial damage or distress and thus did not constitute a serious breach of data protection and anti-spam rules.



The outcome has led to calls for the law to be strengthened and legislation can be expected in due course.