The CAN-SPAM Act. Has It Made A Difference?
I came across an interesting article, What Good has the CAN-SPAM Act Done?
Myself, I have not seen any difference in the spam problem since CAN-SPAM came into effect. The spammers are still going strong. The legitimate people who use email, such as newsletter publishers have had to change the way they deliver their publications so as not to violate the CAN-SPAM laws. That's about the only difference it has made, it caused a headache for the honest marketers.
With the problems I have been having with spammers forging my domain's email address onto their bulk spam, I found this part interesting:
Phoenix Avatar is a homegrown operation; they’re based in Detroit, and they tap into the overweight-and-desperate market by selling bogus diet patches for $60.00. They also engage in spoofing -- that is, they use "innocent third-party e-mail addresses in the ‘reply-to’ or ‘from’ fields of their spam... When spam was undeliverable and bounced back, tens of thousands of undeliverable e-mails bounced to unwitting third parties, sometimes getting the third parties mislabeled as spammers, themselves," to quote from the FTC’s press release.
So this "spoofing" is quite a common tactic for the spammers.
CAN-SPAM says "It prohibits the use of deceptive subject lines and false headers in such messages." The penalty for this offense is a fine and between 1 to 5 years imprisonment and they must forfeit their computer equipment and any property that they bought with the proceeds from this offense.
This is all fine and dandy, but I could not find anything in the act that tells you how to report such offenses. I did report the first spammer who was "spoofing" my email address in the "from" line to the FTC, but they didn't do a thing about it, they never even emailed me back. I got the spammer such down myself by reporting them to their domain registrar. It would have been nice to see them have to pay for the problems they caused me.
You can read the whole article here:
What Good has the CAN-SPAM Act Done?
Myself, I have not seen any difference in the spam problem since CAN-SPAM came into effect. The spammers are still going strong. The legitimate people who use email, such as newsletter publishers have had to change the way they deliver their publications so as not to violate the CAN-SPAM laws. That's about the only difference it has made, it caused a headache for the honest marketers.
With the problems I have been having with spammers forging my domain's email address onto their bulk spam, I found this part interesting:
Phoenix Avatar is a homegrown operation; they’re based in Detroit, and they tap into the overweight-and-desperate market by selling bogus diet patches for $60.00. They also engage in spoofing -- that is, they use "innocent third-party e-mail addresses in the ‘reply-to’ or ‘from’ fields of their spam... When spam was undeliverable and bounced back, tens of thousands of undeliverable e-mails bounced to unwitting third parties, sometimes getting the third parties mislabeled as spammers, themselves," to quote from the FTC’s press release.
So this "spoofing" is quite a common tactic for the spammers.
CAN-SPAM says "It prohibits the use of deceptive subject lines and false headers in such messages." The penalty for this offense is a fine and between 1 to 5 years imprisonment and they must forfeit their computer equipment and any property that they bought with the proceeds from this offense.
This is all fine and dandy, but I could not find anything in the act that tells you how to report such offenses. I did report the first spammer who was "spoofing" my email address in the "from" line to the FTC, but they didn't do a thing about it, they never even emailed me back. I got the spammer such down myself by reporting them to their domain registrar. It would have been nice to see them have to pay for the problems they caused me.
You can read the whole article here:
What Good has the CAN-SPAM Act Done?
posted by Sue Norrad @ 6:21 PM
<< Home