Thirteen European countries unite to tackle spam

IDG News Service - Thirteen European Union countries have agreed to boost cooperation to tackle spam.
Under an agreement announced by the European Commission today, the countries' antispam authorities -- in most cases their data protection offices -- have pledged to exchange information on e-mail system abuses and to follow up on complaints about spammers operating on their territory from other countries.
"Enforcement authorities in member states must be able to deal effectively with spam from other EU countries, even through at present most spam originates from outside the EU," said EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding.
The move is designed to tackle the problem of spammers operating outside a member state's territory, making it difficult for that nation's enforcement officials to act because they lack legal powers to do so.
The 13 countries are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands and Spain.
A recent report by Stanford University claimed that the average Internet user loses 10 working days a year dealing with unwanted e-mail.