If you’re like most European Unionites, you really believed your email address was forever protected by the EU’s CAN-SPAM cousin: The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. The directive is chockfull of the kind of opt-in safeguards you’ve been media-conditioned to cherish.

You silly Ward of the State. All those rules apply only to your Personal Home Email Address. Confused? So was the Crown. This week, after two years of cogitation, Her Majesty’s Information Commissar rationalized the EC Directive:

“The rules on email do not apply to emails sent to organisations except that you [the Sender] must still identify yourself and provide an address. [However, individuals with Personal Corporate Email Addresses] have a right under the [UK] Data Protection Act 1998 to require you to stop using that address for marketing.”

Apparently, in the European Union, it’s open season on any corporate inbox. As for the UK, you can hammer sales@, webmaster@, and customerservice@. But if individuals@ hire a solicitor (US: ambulance chaser), they may manage to opt-out.

So what’s stopping e-marketers from flooding Europe with unrequested email? The Commissar’s wagging finger:

“It serves little purpose to continue to send unsolicited marketing messages to those who have gone to the trouble of telling you they do not want to receive them. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you respect requests from organisations not to email them.”

Wouldn’t be proper, you know.