Green Party Apologizes For E-mail Bungle

Green Party of Ireland has issued an apology for sending unsolicited e-mails in weeks when a new law forbidding spam was implemented. The Republic's Communications Minister was behind the implementation of law.

The reports revealed that an official complaint was lodged with the Data Protection Commissioner following several technology bloggers who received unwanted e-mails regarding a Green Party contest in the 1st week of January 2009.

Claiming that the party's members are innocent, a spokesperson of the Green Party said that the e-mails were not sent in bulk, but sent to a selected batch of journalists and bloggers who might have been interested to take part in the contest. In a democracy, it is crucial that political groups or parties are allowed to contact the general public and send information, as reported by BRANDREPUBLIC on January 18, 2009.

However, contradicting Green's act of sending unsolicited e-mails, Business Blogger. Michele Neylon, said that she had never asked any political party to send her a newsletter and that she had no link with the Greens, as reported by TIMES ONLINE on January 18, 2009. Moreover, the act had not given Neylon an alternative to withdraw from the list.

Another blog writer Alexia Golez was also annoyed at receiving the unwanted e-mail. Golez said that she never requested for including her name in the list; she didn't request for the e-mail, and even though it arrived, it didn't address her personally. So it was definitely a spam, as reported by TIMESONLINE on January 18, 2009.

Meanwhile, confirming that the Green Party had received a correspondence from the Data Protection Commissioner, Green's Communications Manager Damian Connon completely disagreed with the accusation that the electronic mails were spam, as reported TIMES ONLINE on January 18, 2009.

In 2008, there were 70 complaints that reached the commissioner informing about uninvited marketing e-mails. Meantime, spam-related complaints increased to 538 in 2007 from just 66 in 2005.

Also, with the Irish government's enactment of the anti-spam legislation in December 2008, spamming activity in Ireland, unlike ever before, is now considered a crime.

Related article: Green Residents Attacked by phishing E-mail Scam

» SPAMfighter News - 1/29/2009