The anti-spam legislation, or the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007, promotes awareness of spam and will enable international agencies to work together to share information. The legislation covers email spam as well as all electronic messaging such as SMS/text messaging.
However, the new law only helps combat a small amount of spam, as 99%-99.9% of all spam received in New Zealand comes from other countries.
The new Act will affect legitimate marketers in New Zealand by making sure they have expressed or inferred consent to continue sending marketing messages to people on their database. Inferred consent is where the marketers have the email address and send messages to those on their database, but didn't get expressed consent to send messages.
However, many marketers are already fulfilling these requirements because they are standard good e-marketing practice. Businesses will have to provide details about the company sending the item, and provide a free way to unsubscribe from future mailings.
Those found breaking these requirements deliberately could find themselves facing a personal fine of up to NZ$200,000. Organisations could face a fine of up to $500,000.
