The HKSAR Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance (UEMO) has been enacted by the Legislative Council in May 2007. The ordinance covers any electronic messages being sent as text or pre-recorded voice messages to telephones, to fax machine or to email addresses, with a purpose of advertising, promoting or offering any goods, services, business opportunities or the organizations themselves.
Our Advice
This ordinance may affect those HKUST members who have the needs to send multiple electronic messages such as:
- Schools or departments promoting their courses to prospective students;
- Faculty members or organizers of seminars / conferences inviting their audience, etc, etc.
HKUST members are advised to observe the UEMO and follow the rules below when sending multiple electronic messages:
- identify oneself and provide contact information;
- offer a way for recipients to unsubscribe from receiving future messages and honour such requests within 10 working days;
- not send out email messages with misleading subjects;
- not hide the calling line identification (CLI) when sending messages to telephones;
- not send commercial electronic messages to recipients registered in the do-not-call registers (available towards the end of 2007) unless consent has been given by the recipients.
(“Multiple electronic messages” mean transmission of more than 100 electronic messages during a 24 hour period, or more than 1000 electronic messages during a 30-day period.)
For more information, please refer to the
Besides, users are advised to take good care / protection of their computers to avoid their machines being used by spammers to send multiple commercial electronic messages, resulted from mis-configuration of their computers, or of infection with malware such as viruses, trojans or worms. Please refer to our IT Security webpage on How to Protect your Computer for details.