Wasn’t GDPR supposed to stop spam emails?

Introduction:

With the introduction of GDPR came claims from lawmakers and journalists like: “it will give individuals more control over their personal data” and “the end of spam and unsolicited emails”. But to what extent is this really true? Have you noticed a change?

You may have noticed that many organizations have updated their terms of service; every time you visit a new site on a new device your screen takes over by an annoying popup asking you to review how your data is handling, expecting. You to go through page after page analyzing who they share your data with. It becomes exhausting after a while, going through the terms of service of the same websites on all of your devices. Weren’t our lives supposed to become easier? here we will discuss “Wasn’t GDPR supposed to stop spam emails?”.

In order for organizations to send promotional messages/emails to individuals consent from those individuals is needed, prior to GDPR organizations followed this rule very loosely. Options for consent pre-ticked boxes, buried in the terms of service or written using confusing double/triple negatives.

GDPR attempts to address this by stating that requests must:

Be clear, affirmative action
Be separate from other terms and conditions
Allow consent to all, some or no options

Looking at these parameters we should see a noticeable drop in spam. Individuals should be able to withdraw just as easily as they can consent to receive these emails.

Some organizations will criticize these regulations hailing them as being too strict/tough but what they fail to realize is only the people who genuinely want to know about their promotions/new products etc. will opt-in for the emails. Whereas before most of the emails went to the spam folder or deleted making potential customers frustrated and begin to resent the business.