A law aimed at curbing e-mail and mobile phone spam was passed by parliament on Thursday to preserve Singapore's status as a trusted info-communications hub for businesses and consumers, REPORTED DPA. The legislation seeks to prevent local spammers, or those who send out large numbers of unsolicited internet messages, from abusing direct marketing mechanisms. A focused approach is needed to "signal that spamming is socially unacceptable," said Lee Boon Yang, minister for information, communications and the arts. The law also aims at deterring international spammers from exploiting the city-state's telecommunications infrastructure as a base, Lee told parliament. It sets out basic requirements for legitimate direct electronic mass marketing, and provides civil recourse for affected persons. An earlier Infocomm Development Authority survey showed e-mail spam caused users in the city-state nearly 23 million Singapore dollars (15 million US dollars) in productivity losses during a single year. It also revealed that each of the three major internet providers received nearly 5,000 spam-related complaints a month. Users said e-mail spam was the second most important concern following computer viruses. "Given that the mobile telephone in today's context is a personalized device, mobile spam can be more intrusive than e-mail spam," Lee said. The legislation also covers short message services and multimedia messaging services. Singapore already has in place computer misuse laws governing serious and malicious offenses such as denial of service attacks and severe disruptions to infrastructure.
