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How to stop spam? Don't look to legislation
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By Robert Vamosi: Senior Associate Editor, Reviews
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Friday, December 12, 2003
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After months of debate, Congress has approved an antispam bill, known as the
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, or the CAN-SPAM Act of
2003. President Bush has indicated he will sign it before the end of the year. That
sounds like good news for anyone who uses e-mail. But once you look beyond the spin, you'll
find there's much less here than meets the eye.
IN A NUTSHELL, CAN-SPAM prohibits the use of
fraudulent e-mail headers, the use of robotic means to collect e-mail addresses from Web sites,
and the sending of unsolicited adult advertising. It requires e-mail marketers to provide a
working URL in messages so recipients can remove themselves from any future
mailings.
Down the road, the law also calls for the creation of a federal Do Not
Spam list, much like the FTC's Do Not Call list, which gives you the ability to remove your
phone number from telemarketers' databases. The law also prohibits unwanted commercial messages
via mobile services on mobile phones and PDAs.
That all sounds fantastic.
SO WHY DID the attorneys general from California, Kansas,
Maryland, Nevada, Texas, Vermont, and Washington urge the House of Representatives to vote
against the act? Because CAN-SPAM ignores and supercedes any existing or pending junk e-mail
laws in 30 states--including the toughest, California's--with a decidedly weaker federal
law.
The state laws, which are now obsolete, were more stringent than the
federal one in several ways. For example, the laws in Utah and California would allow
recipients to sue spammers who use false e-mail headers. One provision of a California law
would even use the penalties claimed from such cases to help fund the state's high-tech crime
task forces. However, under CAN-SPAM, while recipients can still sue spammers, the burden of
proof has been extended beyond showing that the e-mail header was false and now requires that
plaintiffs show the sender also knew it was false.
It's the opinion of several state attorneys general that this is a much
higher standard of proof than other consumer protection laws, and that spam recipients will now
tie up the legal system with new cases without being able to stop unsolicited e-mails in the
meantime. That is what the direct-marketing associations wanted: judicial gridlock.
ANOTHER SHORTCOMING of the law: According to Spamhaus.org, an antispam
clearinghouse, CAN-SPAM allows 23 million U.S. businesses to spam U.S. e-mail addresses legally
as long as they also provide a means for users to opt-out of future mailings.
It turns out the direct marketers got their way this time around. With
telemarketing restricted by the Do Not Call list, direct-marketing associations now see e-mail
advertising as their last and best option, since automatically sending hundreds of thousands of
e-mails is much cheaper than maintaining call centers. These groups made the rounds in
Washington D.C. and managed to get this muted federal antispam bill passed quickly. For the
legislators in Congress, CAN-SPAM allows them to say, "Look, we did something about spam,"
when, in reality, the act does little to actually solve the problem.
Fortunately, I've never really pegged my hopes on state or federal laws
stopping the flow of unsolicited e-mail. Spam goes beyond borders. A vast majority of the spam
I receive comes from tiny island nations, so a law in the U.S. or any European country will
likely have very little impact on my inbox.
IN 2003, the technology used to send spam became more complex,
and thus spam became harder to stop. It used to be some guy would pop a CD full of e-mail
address into a computer and let the system churn out spam all night. But now worms--Sobig is considered to
be the first--highjack thousands of systems on the Net and use them to distribute their
messages with more anonymity and speed than before. Other worms, such as MiMail, are tasked with
shutting down third-party antispam services like Spamhaus.com.
Need I remind you that if you're not running antivirus and firewall
software on your system, you may be part of the spam problem?
It's going to take something more than an act of Congress to stop spam.
I suggest a boycott of all companies that engage in direct e-mail marketing. Believe it or not,
someone's actually buying the products sold via spam. If that's you: Stop it! In fact, make
sure you never open or click on a spam message again, because some direct marketers make money
depending on how many eyeballs see their messages.
If spam becomes unprofitable, then people will stop sending it. Don't
you agree? Yes or no, I'd like to hear your suggestions for how we can stop this
scourge.
What do you think? Can we stop spam? How? TalkBack to me
below!
