Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

This new spam law is CRAP.

Great idea, bad execution.

         

HughMungus

6:20 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



[news.com.com...]

"...overrides many state laws, and imposes an "opt out" standard instead of a more stringent "opt in" requirement..."

"If the measure becomes law, certain forms of spam will be officially legalized. The final bill says spammers may send as many "commercial electronic mail messages" as they like--as long as the messages are obviously advertisements with a valid U.S. postal address or P.O. box and an unsubscribe link at the bottom."

Good lord what a piece of crap.

lawman

10:20 pm on Nov 22, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Goober beat you to it [webmasterworld.com]. :)

lawman

HughMungus

1:05 am on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yes but my thread has more replies. :P

hannamyluv

1:33 pm on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I personally like this deal better than the alternative. I would really hate to see states individually regulate email. I mean, email addresses aren't like physical addresses. I have no clue where the people on my opt-in list are from.

We've been talking about it in this thread
[webmasterworld.com...]

The federal government had to do something and thanks to our constitution, there isn't much more they can do than what they did in that law. Anything else would have been eventully overturned due to free speech. Of course, I don't think the founding fathers had advertising in mind when they created that, but *sigh* advertising is protected.

The law also protects the innocent business minority. Unfortunaty, a larger portion of the email community will take advantage of the opt-out thing but imagine if the law was the other way around and some moron who forgot he signed up went after you. You can very easily prove that you provide a clear way to opt-out, but its a lot harder to prove that the person opted-in.

jsinger

2:30 pm on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Heck, almost all emails have "an unsubscribe link at the bottom." I'd like one that works and where my unsubscribe doesn't subscribe me to something else.

The new law sure beats the California one!

troels nybo nielsen

3:13 pm on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Spam is an international problem. Spammers are international and so are indeed their victims, including those innocent companies and individuals who are accused of spamming. I doubt that purely national legal initiatives will have much impact.

My own spam filter has not caught one single spammail that was in my own language or from a domain in my own country. They are all in English. More than 90% of the domains in my blacklist are .com. (I do not doubt that some of those email addresses are spoofed). I have given up the idea of trying to track and report any of the spammers. I just bounce and delete the spam.

HughMungus

5:59 pm on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Well of course I could be wrong.

Does bouncing spam with fake bounces actually work? You'd think the spammers would have figured out ways to detect that by now (?)

troels nybo nielsen

10:23 pm on Nov 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



AFAIK you're right. I generally do not let my spam filter show if bounces are successfull, but I changed the options for some hours and it appeared that some hotmail and yahoo addresses were fake and the bounces failed.

HughMungus

5:02 pm on Nov 26, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Anybody know if they made forged headers illegal. If not, there's another reason it would suck.