E-mail scammers face European crackdown

E-mail scammers will be left with "nowhere to hide" following moves to tighten up European consumer protection, according to the U.K. government.

By establishing a network of national enforcement bodies with powers to work together across the European Union, the Consumer Protection Cooperation regulation, which comes into force this month, will help tackle rogue traders who prey on consumers across European borders.

Previously, wide differences in the structures of law enforcement agencies and the methods they use have hampered prosecutions. The new regulations require enforcement authorities to help each other by exchanging information and cooperating on cross-border cases.

The U.K.'s coordinating enforcement body will be the Office of Fair Trading.

The new measures will tackle cross-border scams, including those using e-mail and those that offer phony prizes, distribute misleading advertising and use pressure selling. Also targeted are phone scams based in other EU countries and rogue traders of time-share and vacation club properties.

"Joined-up enforcement across the EU will help to stamp out scams and leave the sharks with nowhere to hide," Consumer Minister Ian McCartney said in a statement.

Steve Ranger of Silicon.com reported from London.

[rcrusoe]

Nowhere to hide?

Lately the majority of our spam is coming from China.

I could be wrong, but I'd think there would be plenty of room to hide there.

[My-Self]

And the USA, Korea, Poland, Russia ...

Many places are spewing spam.

However, the solution would be so simple:
http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso

Very few people are involved in large scale spamming, most are from the US (no matter where their servers are located), and just applying existing laws about fraud would be enough to get rid of them.

When there's a will, there's a way ...