Leader: When is spam not spam?

Anybody involved in sending bulk email is quite aware of the risk they run of being labelled a spammer.

From the kind of pernicious spammers who bombard our inboxes daily to marketers who perhaps send a few stray emails, for whatever reason - all react badly to being linked with spam. For those at the more legit end of the scale it is easy to see why.

But who are these people to claim they aren't sending spam - even if some might think the 'spammer' label goes a little too far, suggesting as it does an habitual element to their activities? At what point does email become spam - is it the sender or the recipient who decides where the distinction lies?

Of course it should be the recipient - after all, only they know whether an email has been solicited. Companies may choose to take liberties with phrases such as existing business relationships or when exactly a person opted in but the recipient will always know, or at least be able to work out just how many degrees of separation there are between the email received and the last opt-in box they ticked.

The Labour Party were absolutely adamant they weren't spamming voters last week. But if enough people tell us they received that email and have no idea why, then surely it must be classed as unsolicited.

The problem is perhaps with the term 'spam' which clouds the matter as it has become such a hated phenomenon.

But as Steve Linford from Spamhaus said of Labour's pleas: "If it's unsolicited and it is sent out in bulk then it is unsolicited bulk email and that is the very definition of spam."

There are degrees of such things of course. (And while we're at it, take our latest poll and let us know what you think constitutes spam.)

Labour claims to have signed up all email addresses through various party activities. However, many of those activities should not have been deemed to be only of interest to Labour supporters and signing up for them should not have been taken as a request for emails from Labour.

But while some liberties have clearly been taken Labour claim they haven't bought in email lists or generated the kind of random database associated with true spammers. That is good to hear yet it raises the issues of a divide in understanding. Of course they didn't for one minute think they were sending spam but that should go without saying.

There are some loopholes in the law - largely thanks to the DTI's flawed consultation on spam - and too much is open to interpretation. A company - or political party - may be able to claim with a clear conscience it has covered its back and ticked all the relevant boxes but they must also know if their means for harvesting email addresses were anything less than 100 per cent opt-in, for those specific mailings, then there are going to be recipients who quite rightly claim those emails are unsolicited.

The benefit of such a fine line between tolerance and intolerance on this issue is that it forces the hands of the would-be reputable marketers.

If they don't like being branded spammers they shouldn't send spam.

Don't forget to take part in our one-click poll and let us know what you class as spam. Or email editorial@silicon.com to have your say.