U.S. Congress accepts antispam law

[Julio Franco]

The U.S. Congress gives final approval to the first federal law regulating spam, which President Bush has indicated he will sign before the end of the year.

Among many provisions, it requires that marketers include "a functioning return" address or a link to a Web form capable of accepting unsubscribe requests. Critics have said it ultimately will fail to have much of an effect on the amount of spam reaching people's in-boxes, in part because of the volume of spam coming from overseas.

Read more: CNet News.

 

[StormBringer]

Thats a shame, as I read a few articles on this which claim that this law actually makes it easier for spammers to do what they want. One such article is at slashdot, EDIT: found the link. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/25/1828207&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=111&tid=126&tid=99

 

[olefarte]

MessageLabs expects that by next April about 70% of email traffic will be spam. Unfortunately many of us are aware of the fallibility of "average" statistics.

Read the whole article from The Enquirer.

The 70% figure is way to low for my e-mail accounts. Last week I decided to take advantage of my ISP's offer of a free e-mail account. I opened the account, sent one e-mail to Rhino-Soft.com, recieved a reply from them, and now I'm getting about 50+ junk mails a day. Just from sending one e-mail. I have two HotMail accounts that I use every day, and they don't get this much junk.

I too doubt that this new law will have much effect. But if it would just reduce the junk by 50%, it sure would help a lot.

 

[agissi]

I was hoping such law would help somewhat, however making spammers simply put an unsubscribe link in the email wont fix much. Its not like your going to unsubscribe from your 100 junk emails and not get anymore spam.


.... It just keeps on coming

 

[SNGX1275]

Luckily my ISP provides me with 5 additional e-mail accounts at no additional charge. What makes this really cool is that I have total control over them (almost). For example - say I need to register for something and provide an valid e-mail address (because I have to do something thats contained in the e-mail) well I can provide an address of one of my additional accounts I have, respond to the e-mail, and watch the account. If I start getting craploads of SPAM I have the ability to delete that address. And I can do this an unlimited amount of times. Recently I entered my address to recieve daily mailings from a site and I never got those daily mailings, but within a week I was getting over 100 spams a day, that account is now removed .

 

[StormBringer]

I don't really think that this problem will ever be fixed completely, my snail mail is still filled with junk daily, nobody seems to worry about fighting that kind of junkmail. Takes me about as long to sort through that every day as it does to sort through the junk that makes it to my inbox in my email client.

I often wonder why they can't just say that if you didn't ask for it, it better not show up, let that apply to both email and snail mail.

 

[poertner_1274]

Hehe, it's a pain in the butt. I heard they were trying to make an anti-spam email list, kind of like the no-call phone list so people can't solicit their information to you ove rthe phone. Well the internet anti-spam email list they said would be simply WAY WAY too big of a database to have it easily accessable. With all the unique email addresses out there, it would be ridiculous. So until they figure out some other way to do this, it is simply way too big of a project to undertake.

 

[Krugger]

Originally posted by poertner_1274
Hehe, it's a pain in the butt. I heard they were trying to make an anti-spam email list, kind of like the no-call phone list so people can't solicit their information to you ove rthe phone. Well the internet anti-spam email list they said would be simply WAY WAY too big of a database to have it easily accessable. With all the unique email addresses out there, it would be ridiculous. So until they figure out some other way to do this, it is simply way too big of a project to undertake.

Dear lord, imagine if even parts of that 'list' if it were created, fell into the wrong hands? that would need to be the most secure DB in existance... well okay, you know what i mean though. spammers would try to hack the list and grab tons of emails to spam away...

 

[asand4]

This will be Useless

Let's really think about this. What good will this bill do? Nothing, that simple! Just putting a valid un-subscribe link will do nothing. If anything, it may give spammers more of an incentive to increase the quantities in which they distribute their junk. I know it would me. If I knew that more and more people will actually have successful attempts at unsubscribing to my garbage, I would automatically send out more to compensate for it.
On top of that, the problem isn't the ability to un-subscribe to this invasion of privacy, it's the fact that they are allowed to do it in the first place.
Even with stringent laws, they still wouldn't be able to totally wipe out spam, but they could greatly reduce it. Think about it, we are actually asking to have the internet policed and we all know how feasable that really is .

The bottom line is that something has to be done about this, if I wanted a bunch of ads as my e-mails, I would request that companies send them to me, as a choice. At least that way, it wouldn't be for a bunch of money grabbing bogus products and services.

asand4

 

[poertner_1274]

The best thing to do with all this spam is NOT use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of their email, because this simply tells them that you are an active account, and as you said you would just send more spam.....that is exactly what they do. Keep sending you more and more junk. So simply deleting it and not worrying about it is the best solution to spam.

 

[wicka_wicka]

The bill purposely has loopholes so the big corporations can still spam...it's completely useless.

 

[Krugger]

Virginia Arrests Man for Spam E-Mail Under New Law
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=582&e=1&u=/nm/20031211/wr_nm/tech_spam_virginia_dc
not the same law but related i spose.

 

[Justin]

How exactly are they expecting to enforce this law as well? The majority of spam comes from outside the United States, outside Canada, and outside Europe. And with the extremely dynamic nature of the spamming to begin with, a law like this actually doing any good seems like a pipe dream.

 

[Didou]

Originally posted by Soul Harvester
The majority of spam comes from outside the United States, outside Canada, and outside Europe.

Most SPAM still comes from the USA

U.N.: Most Spam Comes From U.S.

Of course, this was determined by running certain "tests" on a limited amount of time, but the results were pretty clear. I'm not saying spammers are physically in the US or anything, simply thay maybe, I insist on the maybe, Email systems in the US aren't strict enough ( especially concerning the creation of new Email accounts ).

I myself only get spam on my Hotmail account. The one provided by my ISP & one I have from a previous ISP are clean as far as spam goes.

/me hides his Email adress in his profile in case someone wants revenge & signs him up for some sortof pRon newsletter...

 

[Justin]

Originally posted by Didou
Most SPAM still comes from the USA

U.N.: Most Spam Comes From U.S.

Of course, this was determined by running certain "tests" on a limited amount of time, but the results were pretty clear. I'm not saying spammers are physically in the US or anything, simply thay maybe, I insist on the maybe, Email systems in the US aren't strict enough ( especially concerning the creation of new Email accounts ).

I myself only get spam on my Hotmail account. The one provided by my ISP & one I have from a previous ISP are clean as far as spam goes.

/me hides his Email adress in his profile in case someone wants revenge & signs him up for some sortof pRon newsletter...

That is irrelevant. Most of the distributing servers still propogate their spam, or could so easily, with other machines outside the U.S., so even if it had originated from the U.S. and was sent back into the U.S., it is still crossing over borders and making it not only difficult to track, but even more difficult to prosecute. I see this as a phenomenal waste of time and resources.

 

[poertner_1274]

I agree that it is a waste of time, but something needs to be done about it, and unfortunately 'wasting time' is the only way to deal with it right now.