Ofta has issued guidelines on junk faxes

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Published: 12:00am, 25 May 2004

I refer to John Yuan's letter ('Ofta neglects duty in favour of junk faxers') published on May 11 about unsolicited fax advertisements.

The Office of the Telecommunications Authority (Ofta) appreciates the frustration of fax-line users who receive a large amount of unsolicited fax advertisements, or junk faxes.

There is no law in Hong Kong prohibiting the sending of junk faxes. However, in 1999 Ofta issued the Code of Practice on the Procedure for Handling Complaints against Senders of Unsolicited Fax Advertisements and Guidelines for Senders of Fax Advertisements to telephone service operators and fax senders to follow on a voluntary basis. Since then, operators have been providing a 'not-to-call' list for fax-line users to register their numbers if they no longer wish to receive junk faxes. The list has been maintained by Ofta and is available on our website (www.ofta.gov.hk) for all senders of fax ads to observe.

Ofta has also developed some application programmes to help fax senders update and maintain their circulation lists in an efficient manner. In January, Ofta revised the code to allow telephone service operators to issue a warning letter to a junk fax sender if one complaint is established, to suspend all telephone lines of the sender for 14 days if there are two complaints and to disconnect all the lines if there are three complaints.

This arrangement is to give a junk fax sender a chance to stop his action automatically without further action by the telephone service operator and is a heavier sanction than that in the earlier code issued in 1999. The sending of fax advertisements is a common form of unsolicited electronic messages. Ofta intends to issue a public consultation paper in the near future on the matter of unsolicited electronic messages to explore a range of possible measures to combat the problem, including the need for enactment of legislation or the strengthening of the existing codes of practice and guidelines.

I hope this will clarify any misunderstanding of what Ofta has been doing about junk faxes.