NSW Spam to Use Email Addresses from Yellow Pages in Email Campaign?

Australia's #1 for Law
Join 150,000 Australians every month. Ask a question, respond to a question and better understand the law today!
FREE - Join Now
17 March 2015
1
0
1
Hi, I have built an online service (website) that offers an easy way to track all activities of a business online. It suits almost any kind of business but at the moment I am concentrating on specifically catering it for the florist businesses.

I want to use publically listed (on Australian Yellow pages) email addresses of some florist businesses in Australia to email these businesses and offer them to use my online service for free.

Will the above be considered as spam?

Thank you
 
S

Sophea

Guest
Hi Anton,

Spam refers to Unsolicited Bulk Emails. To be classified as spam, an email must therefore be commercial in nature, unsolicited by the recipient and sent in bulk.

Unsolicited means the Recipient has not given you permission to send the email to them. Bulk means the email is sent as part of a large group of messages, all having substantively identical content.

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk - therefore you may be able to get around it by sending individual, personalised emails to each of the florists. More time consuming but legal.

There is a great fact sheet here which might help you: http://www.acma.gov.au/~/media/Unso...sheet/URL/Commercial Electronic Messaging.PDF
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ian Macleod

Rod

Lawyer
LawConnect (LawTap) Verified
27 May 2014
7,726
1,056
2,894
www.hutchinsonlegal.com.au
May be able to send bulk email as email addresses came from Yellow pages. Having an email address listed publicly may infer consent.

As long as no 'harvesting' of email addresses occurred by bots or software, then inferred consent is not unreasonable and so bulk email would be unlikely to be considered as spam.

If you are still unsure, just ring ACMA.
 

DennisD

Well-Known Member
11 July 2014
179
58
589
The Spam Act 2003 states that you need to obtain consent whether express (such as ticking a box) or inferred (from a pre-existing relationship between the sender and the recipient). The onus is on you as the sender to show consent was obtained. What pre-existing relationship do you have from trawling through their details in the yellow pages? Worth being aware that ACMA administers the SPAM Act and can hand out hefty fines PER DAY that an organisation or individual is in breach.