The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will not start a
national do-not-e-mail list immediately, despite a law passed last
year that calls for the agency to develop a plan for such a
list.
A do-not-e-mail list could be used by spammers to send consumers
more unwanted commercial e-mail, FTC chairman Timothy Muris
said.
The commission, in a report to Congress, instead advocated that
internet service providers (ISPs) continue to work on domain-level
e-mail sender authentication technologies that would ensure e-mail
comes from the domain it said it has come from.
Microsoft and major ISPs have announced e-mail authentication
initiatives in recent months. The FTC said that without some way to
identify spammers, a national do-not-e-mail list would be useless.
The FTC received advice from three computer scientists and more
than 7,000 comments before issuing its report.
"Under current technology, any do-not-e-mail list would become a
do-spam list," Muris said. "Consumers will be spammed if we do a
registry and spammed if we do not."
Under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography
and Marketing (Can-spam) Act, which became law in January, the FTC
is required to report to Congress about the feasibility of a
do-not-e-mail list and create a plan for a list.
Senator Charles Schumer, the main supporter of a do-not-e-mail
list, modeled his proposal on a national do-not-call telemarketing
list, which has been popular with US residents.
The FTC's decision to not move forward with the do-not-spam list
leaves consumers with no recourse against spammers, said Ray
Everett-Church, lawyer for the Coalition Against Unsolicited
Commercial E-mail.
The Act allows ISPs and state attorneys general to sue spammers,
but not individual consumers, and a do-not-spam list would have
given consumers one way to fight back, Everett-Church said.
The difference between the national do-not-call list and a
national do-not-spam list is that most telemarketers are legitimate
businesses that are easy to find, while many spammers advertise
fraudulent products and hide their identities through false header
information, open relays and other means available on the internet,
Muris said.
In the meantime, e-mail users trying to limit their exposure to
spam should use spam filters and keep their e-mail addresses off
public websites and chat rooms, he said.
As part of the FTC's spam-fighting plan required by the Can-spam
Act, the FTC plans to host a workshop on e-mail authentication
later this year.
Grant Grosswrites for IDG News
Service