A European Commission study ascertained that enforcement of laws against junk mailers across Europe is inconsistent when it comes to actual application. More to the point, unless anti-spam laws are enforced and toughened up enough to get satisfactory results, then the constant plague of spam will worsen within the next decade. The study encourages the government to create less ambiguous and more dependable spam rules, improved cross-border cooperation, and larger funds to better assist national privacy watchdogs.

According to Viviane Reding (the EU commissioner for media and information study), even though European legislation explicitly prohibits the distribution of spyware and spam for seven years now, about an average of 65% of European Union denizens are still victimized by the onslaught of spam on a daily basis. She's encouraging the different countries under the EU banner to augment and enforce their national efforts to battle online privacy threats such as malware, spyware, and spam.

The recently released, EU-produced study was published last October 8 and includes the examination of more than one hundred forty cases from twenty-two member states. The analysis shows the disparities and differences between spam enforcement on a case-to-case basis. To be more specific, the top three highest fines were enforced in Spain (€30,000), Italy (€570,000), and the Netherlands (€1,000,000), while the top three countries with the largest number of cases were found in Romania (20), Slovakia (39), and Spain (39).

In contrast, the fines for convicted spammers in Latvia, Ireland, and Romania were meager ones that ranged from hundreds to several thousand euros, which shows why spam remains rampant in Europe up to this day; spammers only need to shift their targets to countries with more lenient rules, and they're more likely to risk and suffer fewer penalties. The "business" of spam lives on, which is why the Brussels-based security advocates are not averse to seeing spammers get hauled into market squares, chained up, and pelted rotten vegetables just to improve traditional, hit-and-miss anti-spam regulations.

Reform is the order of the day for those in the IT security community who want to orchestrate the downfall of spammers in the same manner as spyware makers during the early half of this decade. Although spam appears to have been with us since the explosion of the worldwide web's popularity, it's still a relevant and important issue to discuss whenever online security and Internet privacy rights are brought up.