Thirteen European countries unite to tackle spam

BRUSSELS -- Thirteen European Union (E.U.) countries have agreed to boost cooperation to tackle spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Under an agreement announced by the European Commission on Monday, the countries' antispam authorities -- in most cases their data protection offices -- have pledged to exchange information on e-mail system abuses and to follow up on complaints about spammers operating on their territory from other countries.

Commenting on the agreement, E.U. Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said: "Enforcement authorities in member states must be able to deal effectively with spam from other E.U. countries, even through at present most spam originates from outside the E.U."

The move is designed to tackle the problem where spammers operate outside the territory of the member state that has received a complaint about abusive e-mail and the national enforcement agency cannot act because it lacks legal powers to take action in another member state.

The 13 countries are: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, and Spain.

A recent report by Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, claimed that the average Internet user loses 10 working days a year dealing with unwanted e-mail.