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In the United States, a single federal law directly attacks the problem of spam in Americans' email inboxes. The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, more commonly known as the "CAN-SPAM act", regulates any email whose primary purpose is the advertising or promoting of a commercial product or service.

Despite it's name, the CAN-SPAM Act attacks more than just unsolicited dirty email messages. The law has been implemented broadly to create obstacles to slow the flow of spam and to provide spam's victims with more tools to avoid those nasty digital missives. Before we take a look at these anti-spam tools, it's important to be clear about what is being stopped and why.

WHAT IS "SPAM"?

Spam is any individual unsolicited email message. Spam has become a problem because, unlike regular mail, spam is virtually free to send and the sender can hide or mask their identity. Because of these qualities, many dubious marketers of fake, misleading, or fraudulent products have adopted "spamming" (i.e. flooding the internet indiscriminately with hundreds to millions of these unsolicited emails) to sell their products, services, or fraud.

Spamming became so onerous that by 2000 an estimated 75% of all email was spam. While it is free to send, Spam costs the recipient time to sort through their stuffed email inboxes and money (e.g. internet connection fees, or the costs of fraudulent product/service). Moreover, much of the spam contained material that was extremely offensive to many people (e.g. pornography) or outright illegal (e.g. false or fraudulent products or services). Spam was taking email over and ripping honest people off. Something had to be done.

CONGRESS TO THE RESCUE

In 2003, the problem of spam had become so intolerable that the U.S. Congress was forced to act. It responded with the CAN-SPAM Act, which took effect January 1, 2004 and prohibits:

1) False or misleading header information in the "To" or "From" lines in an email; and

2) Misleading subject lines that do not accurately describe the contents of the email.

The law also requires:

1) Commercial emails provide an "opt out" mechanism that allows the recipient to take themselves off the senders mailing list;

2) All commercial email be identified as an advertisement; and

3) All commercial email must include the sender's physical address.

Each violation of the above prohibitions or requirements subjects the sender to fines of up to $11,000.00 for each event. Of course, Congress can only pass laws. It's up to agencies in the executive branch of government to enforce them.

ENTER THE FTC

Upon its passage, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was charged with implementing and enforcing the CAN-SPAM Act.

The FTC has taken their responsibility seriously and has created a comprehensive website containing useful information and tools for preventing and reporting spam, which can be viewed at:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline /edcams/spam/

The website also has a mechanism to report violations of the anti-spam law and provides an email address where you can forward your spam emails for FTC review:

spam@uce.gov

While the CAN-SPAM Act is currently the only federal law specifically addressing the problem of internet spam, it won't be for long. Additional regulation is inevitable due to the difficulty in identifying spammers who intentionally hide their identities. Regulations will undoubtedly be adopted in the near future to give regulators more power to root out these shadow marketers and internet cons.

Learn more about this author, Joseph Hazelbaker.
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