With respect to the international context of spam phenomenon a number of undoubtedly overlapped laws have been established worldwide. The most important, however, is consider to be the U.S. law of "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act" or simpler called the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-187).

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was introduced in April 2003, with minor changes from the previous year's version CAN SPAM Act of 2001/2002 (S. 630), and with other two bills were subsequently merged into it: a) Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act (S. 1231) and b) Criminal Spam Act of 2003 (S. 1293). The final version was approved in December 2003, and finally signed into law by the President of U.S. on December 16, 2003. The law actually took effect on January 1, 2004.

On the other hand, European Directive for e-Privacy 2002/58/EC is stricter as defines that commercial e-mails within European Economic area are not allowed without recipients’ prior consent according to the final amendments. Regarding Greece, there is also enacted legislation which requires prior consent of the recipient for automated calling systems playing a pre-recorded message, fax, and e-mail; though, this legislation implements the European Distance Contracts Directive 97/7/EC and rather not the Directive 2002/58/EC. So, the procedure of applying the final European directive is still pending in Greece.

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