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Companies using e-mails and automatic phone calls as marketing tools fear they will face a mountain of complaints if the proposed anti-spam legislation comes into effect.
The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Bill, which is being studied by a Legislative Council bills committee, has raised concerns among small and medium-sized enterprises that use fax, e-mail and pre-recorded calls to advertise.
The bill targets local and international firms that send spam e-mails or make telephone calls to potential customers.
A Ms Chan, who works in administration at a tertiary education institution, said after a briefing on the bill that the penalties for spam e-mails were not specific enough.
She said her institution sent out promotional material through e-mail, using the addresses of current and past students.
She worried that people might make more queries about where and when the institution obtained their e-mail address, which, if they were forced to answer, would mean a heavier workload for staff.
"We will have to consider fine-tuning our e-mail database more regularly to increase transparency," Ms Chan said.
Moreover, she said, companies would be more prone to fines if they failed to deliver the "effective" management on the contact database the government expected.
The bill proposes fines ranging from HK$100,000 to HK$1 million and jail terms of up to five years for offenders.
But it has been suggested that practices such as not providing accurate sender information and not respecting the do-not-call registers, be punishable by warning notices and fines.
Not all companies found the regulations difficult to implement, however.
Daniel Kwan Kam-pui, a sales director of an advertising company, said the bill would be effective in regulating malpractice.
He said firms should abide by the "rules of the game", which were currently part of the code of conduct but would be more stringently enforced it they became law.
"The bill is a good move. The public can now stop receiving unwanted spam e-mails. It is a respect for their preference," he said.
Mr Kwan added that it should not be too much trouble for companies to act according to the proposed bills as there were plenty of software programs that would stop e-mails being sent to addresses that had opted not to receive them.
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