Archive for October 1st, 2008
In a move that could have wide reaching implications in the anti spam effort, US state Nevada – famous for it’s ‘Sin City’ of Las Vegas – today becomes the first to require that all transmissions containing personal, identifiable information sent over the internet be encrypted. Key wording from the new law reads,
“NRS 597.970 Restrictions on transfer of personal information through electronic transmission. [Effective October 1, 2008.]
1. A business in this State shall not transfer any personal information of a customer through an electronic transmission other than a facsimile to a person outside of the secure system of the business unless the business uses encryption to ensure the security of electronic transmission”
At Remote Anti Spam, we believe that this is a bold and progressive move and will monitor developments there closely to see how it is enforced. Having said that, we acknowledge the massive headaches this will give small businesses in Nevada, as they must scramble to ensure compliance.
It is conceivable that many small businesses in Nevada will not have prepared and could find themselves breaking the new law from the outset on 1st October. It is unclear at this point how vigorously the Nevada state government will go after such small businesses, particularly in the period shortly after 1st October.
The state of Nevada originally passed this law in 2005 thus giving industry almost 3 years to prepare for today’s 1st October 2008 deadline. This law is designed, not specifically to prevent or filter spam, but as a move to protect citizens from identity theft, phishing and other similar crimes which can result in the leaking of personal private data over a public medium, such as the internet.
If other states observe and follow suit, we may be so bold as to speculate that we could see some sort of reduction in spam for that region as well as better digital protection for personal data on the internet.
Despite the inherent implication difficulties and the inevitable teething problems that will arise, we applaud Nevada for this pioneering and giant step forward.
Full details of the Nevada state law
