정보통신 수단이 발달하고 유무선전화와 인터넷 이용증가와 함께 사업자들의 판매촉진 수단으로서 스팸메일이라는 저비용 고효율성의 광고수단이 등장하였으나, 인터넷이용자 입장에서는 정보화역기능의 대표적인 사례로 인식되고 있다. 스팸메일 발신자들은 이용자의 허락없이 무단적인 개인정보 수집을 통하여 영리목적의 광고정보는 물론 심지어 불법적 내용까지 발신함으로써 수신자의 시간낭비, 악성파일로 인한 컴퓨터 작동방해, 파일파괴뿐만 아니라 광고된 상품이나 서비스를 구입거래하는 과정에서의 문제 등 정신적, 경제적 피해를 광범위하게 야기하고 있다. 본 연구는 개인정보 보호와 광고의 특성 고찰을 통하여 스팸메일이 소비자문제임을 논리적으로 밝히고, 스팸메일에 대한 이용자의 인식 및 수신실태, 피해경험 등을 파악하였으며, 정보통신망법 및 전자상거래소비자보호법 등 스팸메일 관련 법규의 심층분석을 통하여 문제점을 지적하고 스팸메일 소비자문제에 효과적으로 대응하기 위한 방안을 제시하고자 한다.
The Advance in Information & Technologies have made it increasingly easy to transmit information, including messages in text, graphics, and images both by e-mail and by mobile communications. But e-mail and other electronic communication tools may be threatened by unsolicited, unwanted, and harmful electronic messages, commonly known as spam, Unless these threates are cultailed, they could erode user's trust and confidence. Spam, which began as electronic messages usually advertising commercial products and services, has evolved over the past few years, and to simple messages that are potentially dangerous, which can bring much damage, may cause network disruptions, may result in some form of fraud and which are used as a vehicle for spreading viruses and other malware. There is not a simple solution to stop spam, because the low cost of accessing Internet and e-mail services allows spammers to send out millions of spam messages every day at an extremely low marginal cost so that only a small response rate is required to attain high profits. There are several national anti-spam or anti-damage policies such as creating appropriate regulatory framework, relevant business practices, technical solutions, and educations of users. In this context, this study focuses on the improvement of advertising or transaction related laws and legislations to curbe the consumer's damages from spam and related problems. The level of the user's claim or damages from spam can be found by the online survey for grasping and improving the anti-spam policies. One of the framework for analysis is to use empiric data from an online survey (questionnaire) of 350 Internet users aged between 20 to 59 years old, regardless of gender, were sampled from 100,000 the online panels. The User Survey result showed the following: 82% of the User participating in this survey perceive that e-mail spam be very harmful. (and 79.1% of the user consider mobile spam to be very harmful.); The major goods advertised via spam are 'private loan', 'sexual materials', 'dietary suppliments', etc., and 4.1% of respondents bought the advertised goods via spam; 84.6% of the Internet user undergo material or mental damages from spam, and 7.0% of these respondents should be confronted with damages from goods and services purchased. Anti-Spam Policies, Legislative Reviews in Korea; The legislature on preventing sapm in the context of e-commerce should be revised so that some inefficiencies in no-spam registry be corrected; Spammer such as usually conceals his(her) identity, and Users can't grasp his(her) identity for claiming damages via mobile spam; Government should frame an appropriate legal system to prevent the damages via especially mobile spam and to compensate for user's damages.