More on Avoiding the Scent of Spam

Check out this news update re: the war on spam.

FTC Rejects Do-Not-Spam List in Favor of Authentication
By Hallie Mummert, Editor in Chief, Target Marketing and Inside Direct Mail

After a six month period of review, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last Wednesday returned its opinion that the creation and implementation of a do-not-spam registry not only would be impossible to enforce but would do little to decrease the flow of spam received by consumers.

Instead, the federal agency recommended that anti-spam efforts will be best supported by an "e-mail authentication system that would prevent spammers from hiding their tracks and thereby evading Internet service providers' anti-spam filters and law enforcement."

As mandated by the Can Spam Act passed in December 2003, the FTC studied the possible implementation of three types of e-mail registries: a registry of individual e-mail addresses; a registry of domain names that would like to block spam; and a registry of individual e-mail addresses that would be used as a suppression file by independent third parties who could send unsolicited messages to e-mail addresses not registered.

With feedback from the e-mail marketing industry, Internet service providers, database marketing firms, consumer groups, anti-spam advocates and three of the nation's top computer scientists, among others, the FTC concluded that none of the three registry types could be enforced effectively. In addition, the agency determined that a registry of individual e-mail addresses would be open to security and privacy risks that could result in more unwanted mail from spammers.

Noting that e-mail authentication systems might render a do-not-e-mail registry unnecessary, the FTC also announced that it will hold an Authentication Summit this fall to help advance authentication solutions in the fight to give consumers more control over their e-mail inboxes.