Nature and Magnitude of the Problem and the Need for Government Action
1. Spam is generally described as unsolicited electronic messages, usually in the form of commercial marketing emails. Most of the spam received in New Zealand originates from overseas. According to New Zealand internet service providers (ISPs) and anti-spam solution companies, spam accounts for about 40% to 75% of all email traffic (estimated at over 350 million messages per month). While effective filtering reduces the overall quantity of spam reaching the end user, this is merely a movement of the burden from the recipient to the ISP, not a solution.
2. The problems associated with spam include the annoyance and loss of time involved for users in dealing with large quantities of unwanted emails, the consequent loss of user confidence in dealing with business and other communications online, the consumption of network and computing resources as well as email administrator and helpdesk time, and the loss of worker productivity (United States research has shown that spam results in a 1.4 percent loss in office worker productivity - a similar level of loss of productivity is expected in New Zealand). Spam is also associated with attacks on the security and integrity of computer networks through viruses and the like, identity theft (e.g. emails seeking personal information from users and masquerading as emails from a bank), and the sending of offensive or indecent material.
3. Existing laws, which can generally deal with spam content issues such as offensive or misleading material, are not specifically designed to deal with the problems associated with large spam volumes or mass e-marketing, and technical solutions do not alleviate the load of spam on the Internet infrastructure before it reaches the recipient's ISP.
4. Without Government action to address the problem of spam New Zealand risks being seen as a safe haven for spammers, as other countries progressively pass anti-spam legislation and there is the consequent risk that legitimate email traffic from New Zealand to other countries could be blocked without sufficient verification. New Zealand also currently lacks a basis from which it can enter into bilateral or multilateral agreements to have spam coming into New Zealand from overseas sources investigated and action taken by these partner countries.
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