Vietnam is going to have anti-spam laws

Will penalize between VND 1 - 20 million for individuals and organizations that distribute spam, trade e-mail addresses, phone numbers for advertising purposes, install standalone software on the advertising page? How is a valid promotional email? .

These are the main contents to be discussed and debated at the seminar "Commercial advertising (QCTM) on electronic means" organized by the E-Commerce Department (Ministry of Trade) on August 16 2006.

Many delegates attending the seminar on electronic media: "Making a draft circular at this time is reasonable!"( The Phong photo )

At the workshop, the Ministry of Trade also issued a " Draft Circular of Guidelines on commercial advertising on electronic means ". Which explains quite a bit about advertising letters and spam.

Firstly, promotional letters are e-mails with contents that introduce to recipients about goods, services, business opportunities, investment . Secondly , encourage purchase, use of services, participation business, investment . Third : Provide a website address containing the above content.

At the same time, the draft circular also stated, advertising letters must meet the requirements such as: Title clearly, not confusing, consistent with the information content. Valid and valid mailing address. The content of the message does not contain false information, which may be misleading, and must specify the name, phone number, and contact address of the sender. The content of the letter does not violate the law on commercial advertising.

In particular: " The promotional message must have a function that allows the recipient to reject the next promotional message, this function must be effective at least 30 days from the date of the advertisement. "

Thus, e-mails that do not meet the above requirements will be considered spam.

The draft Circular provides the forms of sanctioning administrative violations in the field of commerce to apply to acts of distributing spam. Tong said that the level of administrative punishment is from 1 to 20 million VND for acts of distributing spam, trading email addresses and phone numbers for advertising purposes, installing malicious code to infiltrate human computers used at advertising sites on the web .

The seminar on electronic commerce QCTM also mentioned quite a lot about the responsibility of organizations and individuals that send advertising letters, but unfortunately do not include regulations for ISPs.

In general, in the fight against spam, there are many measures in the legal corridor, technical measures, but affordable people are still the deciding factor. And users still have spam! While 48% of users still think they can unsubscribe from spam by . answering these letters or 35% of users still "impartial" posting their email addresses on tables believe? (Information published in the workshop)

Ms. Van Anh, a specialist of the Ministry of Trade, said the possibility of circulating advertising on electronic media will be effective and effective later this year. The representative of E-Commerce Department - Ministry of Trade also expressed the wish to receive the comments of the authorities and the public regarding the contents of the Draft.

Some comments at the workshop:

Dr.Vu Quoc Khanh - (VNCERT Center Director): The law is restricted by national borders.But spam does not.Can not handle, that can only prevent spam originating from abroad!

ISPs, organizations, companies, systems . must receive spam should use technical measures to filter and block spam effectively. In case of emergency, serious consequences, the national computer incident response centers (CERTs) will have a decisive, root-handling role! "

Mr. Tran Dang Duy - (Deputy Head of Advertising and Exhibition Department - Department of Basic Culture and Information): " Managing Advertising issues, many current Laws are inadequate, such as regulations not advertised on the page. most newspapers will not be suitable for new journalism: Electronic Newspaper. "

Ms. Ung Ngoc Anh - Director of DotVN, Chief Representative of Hi-Tek in Vietnam: " The sooner the legal framework is tight, the better the development process of the QCTM market on electronic means. sure and soon get into that. "

The Phong