Will Laws Deter Spammers?

Interested in preventing spam from flooding your company's inboxes? Don't rely on any laws to do the job for you, research company Gartner says.

Instead of relying on the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, or CAN-SPAM, law to stop spam, business should use their own resources. These include good e-mail management practices and the use of appropriate spam-filtering technology, Gartner said.

"Enterprises should not expect federal legislation to solve their inbound spam filtering problem," Gartner said. "CAN-SPAM will likely not change spammer behavior. However, it will cause increased scrutiny of all e-mail."

The CAN-SPAM bill overrides antispam laws passed in individual U.S. states, many of which are more stringent than CAN-SPAM, Gartner said.

Likely Effects

According to Gartner, the effects of the law will include:

• E-mail marketers no longer have to comply with 36 state laws and, although the bill requires a valid opt-out mechanism, it does not make clear who should be responsible for implementing the unsubscribe or do-not-contact request.
• Businesses, Internet service providers, and vendors filtering inbound e-mail will have to develop increasingly sophisticated technology and practices to decide between legitimate advertising material and spam, both of which will have to carry the 'ADV' tag in the subject line.
• Disreputable spammers will ignore the legislation and if they feel under threat, will use offshore ISPs beyond the reach of U.S. jurisdiction to send material.

The CAN-SPAM bill, which was passed by the U.S. Senate in November, requires approval by the House of Representatives before it can be signed into law by President George Bush.