Do you receive unsolicited advertisements in emails, text messages or apps? Or do you receive other messages you do not want or do not trust? If so, this is considered spam.
Spam is illegal in the Netherlands. The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) takes action against spam. However, you, too, can do various things yourself to limit the inconvenience that such messages cause.
Do not share your email address or telephone number on the Internet
Never share your email address or telephone number on social media, internet forums, newsgroups or other websites. Spammers have robots that search the Internet automatically for email addresses and telephone numbers, so make sure yours cannot be found on the internet.
Tip: Do you like posting messages on the Internet? And posting is not possible without your email address? In that case, you can use a temporary email address. Or create a new email address. In that way, all unsolicited messages will go there, instead of the email address you use for friends and family.
Unsubscribe from newsletters
Did you, as a customer, give your contact information to a company? In that case, the company can send you newsletters and other messages. But the company must ask your permission for this. If you agree, the company can only send you messages that are related to the company. For example, a car rental company is only allowed to send you messages about rental cars.
Do you receive newsletters from a company, and you no longer want to receive them? Unsubscribe from those newsletters. In each newsletter, you must have the opportunity to do so easily. Most newsletters have an unsubscribe button at the bottom. Have you unsubscribed from a newsletter? If so, the sender can no longer send you any unsolicited messages.
Protect the email addresses of others as well
Are you sending an email to many people at the same time? Hide each email address for the others. You can do this by entering all email addresses in the BCC field. In this way, someone who receives your email cannot see the other recipients of the message. And they cannot use the email address to send spam.
BCC stands for ‘Blind Carbon Copy’. This means you are sending a copy of your message to many people, who cannot see that others have also received the same message.