Thanks to two spammers

I was talking to someone at "The clever zone" about a spam he'd sent me, and I was telling him, as usual, that this contravened the PEC Regulation 2003. He said it didn't. That surprised me, no-one's ever argued before.

Most people's interpretation of the regulation, is that it's OK to spam businesses, the regulation only applies to individuals (I actually don't think that's correct). but how do you tell the difference?

The guy from "The clever zone" cleverly argued that since I'd registered my own domain name, it had to be a business. I disputed that, and he got a bit heated. "If you don't like it, go to the Information Commissioner".

Oh.

Well.

That's interesting. I hadn't known before who one complains to - I'd tried to find out using Google, without any luck. So I located the Information Commissioner, phoned them, and followed it up with an email. They're looking into it now.

So thank you, "The clever zone" for making me more clever about who I can go to to make a formal complaint.

I also got a spam from Tropicleanse (I don't know what they sell, the email was too dazzling to read, maybe they clean tropics?) and I phoned them up. I spoke to John, and the voice sounded a bit familiar, and then he said "That's Alan Solomon, isn't it?" It's John from Clearsmoke! I've called him a few times now. He says he's escalating the issue, and so I gave him one more thing to escalate. He said he's at a call center in the Phillipines. I hope that's going well.

And I accidentally bumped into someone doing similar stuff with spammers - one of the spammers I got an email from, accidentally (I think) copied in their email, which also cited the PEC regulation 2003. So I emailed my fellow anti-spammer, and we're swapping notes on this. So more thanks to The Toner Place, for putting us in touch, albeit (I think) unwittingly. And The Toner Place wno't be sending me any more spam. Probably.