I recently heard about the senate passing a “no-spam” bill, and then today I read in the BBC about EU considering legislation to “stem the tide of spam.” Now this may seem all well and find on the exterior, and quite frankly I do not enjoy spam either, but I do not think a federal mandate is necessary to prevent this.

First it is essentially asphyxiating another part of free speech. Now I’m sure you’re thinking, “yeah but is annoying, and all and all it has no worth”, which is can be true. Unfortunately when we start to limit something we set precedent for future limitations. I could list examples, but I’m sure you can think of one yourself.

Secondly, the individuals who join such a program are going to be individuals, who in most other cases would block or delete junk mail. Is it so much to ask to spend a few minutes everyday deleting a few unwanted emails? Is a federal mandate really necessary to prevent these deceptive ads?

Thirdly nuances will always exist in some form, shape or degree. Some we can eliminate, some are better left as is. I cannot stand when an individual chews with their mouth open, making that horrid slapping sound, but I do not strike them for doing so. Though I agree spam is obnoxious, putting a mandate on it will set precedent, just as the no-call list has(which I don’t agree with either, but that’s a different discussion).

Now if a crime does happen, lets say a junk email deceived some individual and they gave out their credit card number which was stolen: Well first and foremost I would check the integrity of any site that requests something such as a credit card number, but in this instance I believe the individual should pursue a case against the violator. The same applies if they were deceived into purchasing something that they did not intended, and again they should pursue such an instances with the law. Many other anecdotes exist, but the point is there are cases were spam can be truly harmful, but overall its but a mere nuance on the grand scale of life.

If also there was a way to technically block it someone would've designed a software product that would do it. like the pop up advertisings, there are many free and paid software programs to limit those. there's no need for a government mandate in an environment that would take care of it as well

I say that every advertising E-Mail should put "Ad" in the beggining of every subject!

I don't agree with this article at all. However, I do agree that a no-spam list is not a good answer.

The reason for this is because while the telemarketers were operating legally for the most part, before the donot call list....most of the worst spammers take great pains to spoof emails, bounce it off foreign servers, etc. Therefore, such legislation wouldn't help that much.

I agree with the do not call list by the way. The schmucks who cry out free speech, do not realize that the annoying phone call is different than trying to censor for example a news program you don't like. You can always change the channel on your tv, but these sales calls represent an intrusion upon my personal space.

Actually spam is pretty hard on mail servers. Some servers have had a lot of problems with overloads of spam. Thats why they implemented ways to block mail from certain addresses. But spamers use fake addresses. All within the law. Another thing spammers do is offer you an unsubscribe option. Which unsubscribes you to that peace of mail and notifies the original reffering service which preceeds to sign you up for another. Which is also within the law. Regulations should be put forth on the deceptive practices of spammers. Freedom of speach is one thing but offering questionable products using shady marketing practices is another thing all together. Especially when those practices begin to adversly affect the operations of other businesses and individuals. Email was never intended to be a marketing tool and if they restricted that aspect of it there would not be an adverse affect on how individuals use it. That is of course if they do it right and give control to the consumer instead of creating loopholes for advertising that favor large corporations.

In other words I'm all for government intervention in a situation like this but thats only if they can do it without screwing up up. Thats a big IF I know.

I would say the intrusions represent an abuse of something that was intended to be a communications tool, not a marketing tool. Marketers just shouldn't be allowed to use every facit of our infrastructures to sell stuff to us. If we want to shop we should be able to make that decision for our selves without having to disrubt our lives to avoid sales reps.

I don't remember tge forefathers creating laws that allowed marketers to stalk consumers.

I understand your points purfus. My biggest fears are the precedents these can set in our society. I would prefer to see a resolution through more ethical corporations and business practices, unfortunately that is difficult in our current age.

It is an intrusion, but it is not as intrusive as a phone call, or a door to door salesman in my opinion. I prefer smaller government with more responsible individuals, which would include the businesses.

this is quite a good article and sparks a pretty good debate.

IMO, I think something needs ot be done. I've been discouraged from using my e-mail account because of spam. i receive well over 40 spam mails a day on average and yes the filter is on low, but I need it on low because I don't want important e-mails getting caught in the filter. It just gets tiring of having to delete so many every day and I want something done. E-mail is a tool for communication and not for advertising about getting a body part's size increased. Spam is out of control, I'll bet not even half of these so-called companies are even real, but nothing more than a bunch of low-lifes either looking to pester someone or get inforation to scam someone.

The solution is simple. If you do not want spam then only accept emails from approved email addresses. Problemed solved. Why are people so stupid?

Everyone using email should have at least two addresses. One web-based free account to use on websites where you know darned well that they're adding you to spam lists, so you never check it, and just let all that spam pile up there and get deleted by Yahoo or Hotmail or whoever a couple times a week, and another that you actually use for personal email, which you ONLY give out to friends, family, and maybe work.
~zippy.

i think that we need some regulation for spam, i'm not sure if the situation is as bad as told in an article in the current iussue of newsweek int.:
"According to Spamhaus, a London-based anti-spam arganization, spam accounts for 60 percent of all Internet traffic, and it's expected to rise to 70 percent by the end of the year."
(Bringing Down The Internet, Newsweek International (Nov.3), Page 52)
as i said, i'm not sure if the situation really is that bad, but i'm witnessing an increasing amount of spam-crap in my mailbox as well, so something has to be done!

I really get a lot of spam, but anything the EU is for, usually is meant to push us closer to tyranny.

How about truth in spamming...no anonymous bounce back addresses.
If you do not invite these communications, and when they continue, it is harassing, and that is grounds for suing a company who telemarkets by phone. A law should be past in which the FROM line indicates the real sender who is accountable. This would aid in filing suit against companies/individuals doing this stuff.

Also, they should be forced to include the word "Advert" in the subject, precedng the rest. This way, you could do a rule that drops all Advert mail into the trashcan in your mail program.

I agree, something must be done.
Email, like my telephone, exists for MY convenience. I should not have to adopt special measures.
Further, the 'unsubscribe' link should work, not lead to a 404.
My telephone number is unlisted-not that it stops all voice spam, but for this 'treat' i pay 1.50 per month.
Its time to fix this. it is not a matter of a few seconds a day, and if it were, that still would not be the point. The point is, i did not ask for this junk mail, or the junk calls, the burden should NOT be mine to keep unwanted solicitations.
Bottom line? spammers need to be hung by the toenails. end of story.
btw....good to see you again, code.

~time flies~

thanx zeitgheist

raoulduke1
Date: November 1, 2003 @ 12:30 AM
The solution is simple. If you do not want spam then only accept emails from approved email addresses. Problemed solved. Why are people so stupid?
zippythechip...
Date: November 1, 2003 @ 12:54 AM
Everyone using email should have at least two addresses. One web-based free account to use on websites where you know darned well that they're adding you to spam lists, so you never check it, and just let all that spam pile up there and get deleted by Yahoo or Hotmail or whoever a couple times a week, and another that you actually use for personal email, which you ONLY give out to friends, family, and maybe work.
~zippy.

I'm glad you have found good solutions for your spam problems. But not everyone has been so lucky. Not everyone even has the knowledge to do stuff like that.

Personnally about 1 mail a week makes it through my filters. And about 3 or four good emails get labeled junk which I need to search for. The point is we should not need to go through this.

And yes those firgures are pretty accurite. About 60-70 percent of email traffic is spam. Thats junk mail. Not including newsletters and things people unknowingly subscribe to. That figure describes mail sent to addresses without the users permission. Spam is out of control. Spam in the postal service is also out of hand. The fact that firms can pay a fee to have their ads distributed to everyone in a region is sick. They are essentially selling ads to you without your permission.

Ethical business practices are just not gonna happen. To be frank, I'm tired of holding my breath for it to happen as well. It's a pipe dream. I'm actually a bit surprised there is any opposition to controlling the flow of spam. The majority of this spam is done by corporations, not joe blow. And the ones done by joe blow are done by him for the sack of his wallet, to which he is being paid by a corporation. With all the controls set forth by our government and the legeslators paid for by corporations. We reach a point where restrictions are being considered for corporations and we are concerned about precedents being set. I don't think they need precedents to have adverse affects on us. They do it anyway.

I agree code marking junk mail propurly would be a great step. In fact I think mail should be considered fruad otherwise. What would happen to you if you started sending out all kinds of physical mail with fake return addresses on it.... Propurly marking what mail is and is not warrented would also be great. In my opinion any type of email marketing save that of propurly marked newsletter that can be easily unsubscribed to. Also setting restrictions on third partty referals would be very effective. Meaning one firm can not give another firm your address you must do it yourself. If I had my way I would disallow any marketing use of phone, physical mail, and email. They can have web pages and store fronts. Although legitimate newsletters should be allowed it should be very easy to unsubscribe and recieve no further mailings and a person should have the right to sue for the intrusions if the person is unable to unsubscribe or if further mails continue after unsubscribing. I have no sympathy for these people they have and will continue to rape every aspect of our infastructures and we are the ones who have to pay for it. Don't believe go take a drive and count how many signs you see. In fact to put it in even better perspective go take a walk and count how many adds you can find on litter and other trash that has been disgarded. Empty soda bottles. Candy bar wrappers. You wont see the firm featured in the add coming around and picking things up. We need to pay a sanitation department to keep our streets clean. And now in the digital age we need to by special email programs and use system process times to clean out our mail boxes. Not to mention the wasted bandwidth. All for the profit of firms.

purfus:
I never have supported deceitful companies or individuals who send massive amounts of beguiling emails/phone calls ect. What I disappove of in federal mandates is not stopping these deceitful services, but banning the action in itself.

I am in the minority with this opinion, and I'm sure these laws will eventually come into fruition. I await an opportunity to read the actual text of the bill and hope it coincides with yours and many others desires without squashing other actions.

I would prefer to see an increase in our action such as creating new accounts(like zippy suggested one for suscribing to various things and another for personal email), utilizing email features like block and filter and other methods.

Even though these actions are highly unpopular I don't think they should be outright banned. I am a libertarian at heart, and prefer smaller government for the most part. But such suggestions as code's, I think are more reasonable approaches to this situation.

Why can't we have a "opt-in" rather than a "opt-out"? What about the companies that sell your personal information?

I agree that the current anti-spam legislation will not work. The government had no problem making it easy for the RIAA to sue, but the government is finding it real hard to come up with a solution to stop spam.

Could it be that a lot of these politicians have there pockets open to the special interests? These days, money does talk.

How come I have to beg a company to stop sending me email when the company should be begging to send it to me?

My question is why are there so many "Penis Patch" and "Viagra" spammers? Do they think the whole country is male and has a problem with impotence?

And I certainly am no fan of government control, but I am when it comes to business. You can't have a group of citizens with the sole purpose of creating profit running free. It's a bad idea in concept. No that level of control should not be 100% but when it comes to simply keeping them off what should be private civilian networks I think a bit of control is in order. Not like they dont control us to make their lives easier.

In saying "a few minutes everyday deleting a few unwanted emails" you assume it's just a few. You probably mean 5 or 10 or even 50 junk emails. On a good day I am currently recieving over 150 junk emails wich contain information ranging from new cars to porn sites to viagra. Now you may say just enable a filter. In outlook there is a way to add senders to a list of junk emailers to delete those messages, currently my list is over 2500 senders strong and i still get spam because they keep changing their address. I can't turn on the filtering that only allows certain senders because I get emails from people I don't know, sites I join (like this one), etc. Spam is a huge problem and shouldn't be brushed aside so cavalierly.

Big your situation saddens me but does not surprise. One suggestion I have for you if you have not already done so. Create a filter that filters out the word "unsubscribe" It may cut down on your junk quite a bit. The send reject is not an efficient way of filtering and it can be real hard on your system when you get that many senders. Good luck.

A couple of our customers had 5000 and 7550 spam e-mails on their PC's, and one used dial-up.
This stuff is getting totally out of hand.
It only costs about $ 275 to send a spam msg. to everyone in the world, and a success rate of 0.003 % will pay for that.
These guys should get heavy fines and jail sentences.
In my opinion, they are stealing people's time, which is murder.

The Kid

Well I'm glad to say, that I found the bill for the no spam bill called CAN-Spam, and unlike my fears it mentions no list. It for the most part just criminlized the action. Which I do not fully approve of, but I much rather have that sort of legislation. Which should make the acts pursuable by law, and after a few cases are won I would assume, spammers would wisen up. I just hope is passed in a very similiar form to its current.

Without any attachments like give up your right to privacy and we stop these corps from spamming you.

In my opinion email needs to be overhauled at both the client and server end. My problem with spam is when it is spoofed spam. I hate not being able to tell where it came from and I hate the fact that they were able to get my email address merely from guessing.

The way email works needs re-writing.

What about that law against gay rights? The Bill of Rights says that laws cannot be based on religion. Funny what the government leaves in and makes exceptions for.

I get Emails trying to sell me viagra and pills that give you a bigger dick. Make it stop!!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

".. if you do not want spam then only accept emails from approved email addresses..."

That doesn't work when a lot of your necessary email comes from people who are not in your addressbook. I regularly hand out business cards, am I to ask each person who gets one for their email address?