Summary: What is Singapore Anti-Spam?
Starting June 2007, sending unsolicited electronic message in Singapore will be charged as civil offence. For details, read online e-document here or click image on right.
It applies to commercial email, commercial SMS/MMS
- It doesn’t apply to telemarketers
- Unsubscribe request is effective maximum 10 business days after the submission of the unsubscribe request
- It applies if the SPAM committed in Singapore (sender/organization is physically reside in Singapore)
- Sending email to addresses obtained by harvesting email address in the internet is ILLEGAL
- Buying email address list obtained by harvesting email address in the internet is also ILLEGAL
- The damage is not to exceed SGD$25 per message, and not to exceed SGD$1 Million in total, unless the plaintiff able to show that the SPAM has caused damage more than SGD$1 Million
So in order not to violate the SPAM law, the email newsletter should:
- The subject must start with “<ADV>”.
- Must have unsubscribe facility (Using auto-unsubscribe is much better to manual unsubscribe. When using auto-unsubscribe, the subscriber will be automatically removed from your database instantly and automatically.)
Example of our spam complaint report:
While we automatically process all unsubscribe requests and spam complaints for you automatically, the Unsubscribes and Complaints Over Time reports makes it easy to see exactly who, when and why each subscriber left your list.
The type of permission you MUST have.
You can only email subscribers using our services if you obtained the permission in any of the following ways.
1) They opted in via your web site
This could either be through a newsletter subscribe form or by ticking a checkbox on another form. This checkbox cannot be checked by default and it must clearly explain that checking it will mean you will be contacting them by email.
2) They completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be emailed
If someone completes an offline form like a survey or enters a competition, you can only contact them if it was explained to them that they would be contacted by email AND they ticked a box indicating they would like to be contacted.
3) They gave you their business card
If someone gives you their business card and you have explained to them that you will be in touch by email, you can contact them. If they dropped their business card in a fishbowl at a trade show, there must be a sign indicating they will be contacted by email.
4) They purchased something off you in the last 2 years
By making a purchase from you they have provided their permission implicitly. Feel free to email them but at the same time, we think it's always better to ask anyway, so why not include an opt-in checkbox as part of the checkout process.
The following Scenarios that DON'T equate to permission
Basically, anything outside the examples above doesn't equal permission in our eyes, but here are some examples to make sure we're crystal clear.
1) You obtained the email addresses from a third party
Whether you purchased a list, were provided one by a partner or bought a bankrupt competitor's customer list, those people never gave YOU permission to email them and they will consider your email spam. No matter the claims of the source of this list, you cannot email them with our services.
2) You scraped or "copy and pasted" the addresses from the Internet
Just because people publish their email address doesn't mean they want to hear from you.
3) You haven't emailed that address for more than 2 years
Permission doesn't age well. Even if you got their permission legitimately, they won't remember giving it to you. If you haven't sent something to that address in the last 2 years, you can't start now.
