The CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act of 2003 went into effect at the beginning of this year. You can read about it at here. The law is set up to regulate spam, prohibiting techniques such as spoofing addresses, faking subject lines and ignoring recipients’ opt-out requests. It doesn’t ban unsolicited commercial e-mail outright.

Here are some tips you should follow to make sure your emails are CAN-SPAM compliant:

  • make sure your sender information is legitimate

  • don’t use a misleading subject

  • add your postal address to all email

  • if your email isn’t opt-in, make sure there is a notice that states the email is an advertisement. (You don’t need to do this if your list is opt-in – which hopefully yours is!)

  • add an easy to find and follow ‘unsubscribe’ option and unsubscribe all requests within 10 days (or you’ll be subject to up to $250 per email address)

Whether the CAN-SPAM Act is actually working is a different story. Spam hasn’t decreased since the law went into effect, but some spammers have started taking measures to make their emails ‘look’ compliant. A recent Clickz.com article interviewed Susan Larson of SurfControl who cited a number of methods she’s seen recently. Some are putting their physical addresses at the bottom of emails, only as an image. That way, they only need to change the picture on their servers to change the actual address. Others prominently display an opt out notice but when you click to opt out, you are bombarded with a number of pop-up ads. Still others claim to deliver their advertising as a ‘secondary’ message.

In addition, spammers have become more sophisticated in getting through email filters. Many add spaces or extra characters to commonly filtered words. Others use randomly generated nonsense subjects.

Most people believe that CAN SPAM probably won’t work. Anita Ramasastry summarized a number of reasons why the law will probably be ineffectual in her article The New Federal Spam Law. In it, she makes a case for why the law probably won’t work – namely, most spammers are from overseas or offshore ventures. Getting US spammers to pay large fees will probably be extremely difficult as well. There’s also the potential of a Do Not Spam registry similar to the Do Not Call list, but it’s doubtful that spammers will abide by that. On another note, the law may actually be a violation of the First Amendment because it restricts communication… so I guess we’ll have to wait for this to play out. Her belief is that the solution will be in technology, not the law.

Fortunately (perhaps?), Bill Gates has recently spoken about how Microsoft is working on a solution to reduce the overall amount of spam. If he has his way, spammers will soon be paying for unsolicited mail (read a Washington Post article about his recent comments). Whether or not he is all talk at this point remains to be seen…

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