Anti Spam - SpamUnit

The CAN SPAM Act of 2003 stands for the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003. As the name suggests, the problem here lies with non-solicited, commercial email, or spam. What is special about the Act is that it does not ban spam altogether; instead, it places restrictions on the kind of spam mail that can be sent. The spam law here has four main aspects that allow unsolicitied marketing mail to take place:

This was the first law to restrict spam sending across the USA in general; although other states had spam restrictions, this new law trumps them all. As such, it acts as a federal spam law. Sponsored by Conrad Burns and Ron Wyden, it was a cross-party bill that won widespread support amongst the more techno-literate in Congress, but it also polarised opinion in general; some thought the legal restraints on spammers were not strong enough. Nonetheless, the act became law in 2003.

The act has four main facets. Firstly, all unsolicited emailers must allow potential customers to opt out of receiving their messages in future. This sounds simple enough; the recipient who decides that they do not want any more spam contacts the company and asks them to stop sending them email. But then the company, by law, is given ten days to stop sending spam, although they can retain the email address on their database. Furthermore, some companies think that they have identified a loophole in the “must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days” clause to merely start spamming the same people again after this time period has run out.

The second part of the CAN-SPAM law relates to email headers and e-mail subjects. Previously, there was no law against using garbled or misleading subject lines, so long as there was no instance of fraud committed. Since CAN-SPAM, however, spam emails are supposed to have intuitive subject or topic lines, so that the user knows what the mail is advertising and can filter their mail accordingly. Spam header information, too, must be honest and fully disclosed. This is so that antispam techniques such as a spam mailscanner can receive the correct origin information from spam emails, to block them if required. Also, it means, should the company be taken to court, that there is honest, verifiable information available about the servers and networks used.

The third aspect is the physical mailing address must be displayed. That is, the company responsible for email marketing must provide its real mailing address, usually after the marketing information at the foot of the email. Again, this is for tracing and honesty purposes; the potential customer could write to the company physically to ask for their address to be removed, or use the mailing information when seeking legal advice. The theme of these second and third rules is one of accountability: the spammers must be open to communication from those who wish for no more spam from that company.

Finally, the fourth component is a subject line indicator of adult content. If it’s adult spam, or porn marketing spam, then the topic line of the email must reflect this. If the spam sent does not say “SEXUALLY EXPLICIT” in the subject, and is found to be spam, then the spammer is guilty of breaking the CAN-SPAM law.

Since this was the first federal antispam law, there have been changes in the spam industry since it came into force. More and more antispam lawsuits have come into prominence (see our Lawsuits article) with reference to the CAN-SPAM laws. What’s more, if fraud or other offences are carried out by spammers in their line of work, the offences can become “aggravated”, boosting their penalties. In this sense, the law can make for some very hefty sentences.

However, others have said that the root problem of spam remains: after all, the CAN-SPAM law legally allows unsolicited spam emails. Some antispam campaigners point out that the burden of prevention lies on the user, who must use spam protection such as spam filtering software such as SpamAssassin or - for larger purposes - hardware like the Barracuda spam firewall, in order to keep their inboxes safe. They ask if the law really benefits the individual, or whether it actually helps out the spam industry. It is a valid question, particularly in light of the fact that spam production has only increased since the law came into force. Indeed, a very large percentage of spam does not even stick to the law, as many spammers judge this to be a risk worth taking.

Nonetheless, the recent arrest of spam king Robert Alan Soloway shows that, for those that get caught, the penalties are likely to be severe. Maybe with more cases like this, spammers will see harsh punishment as enough of a deterrent to cease their business and thus help stop spam, at least in the United States.