FTC Declines Do-Not-Spam List

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Trade Commission will not immediately start a national Do Not E-Mail list, 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 would likely be used by spammers to send consumers more unwanted commercial e-mail, FTC Chairman Timothy Muris says. The FTC, in a report to Congress on Tuesday, instead advocates Internet service providers continue to work on domain-level e-mail sender authentication, technologies that would require e-mail to come from the domain it says it's from.

Microsoft and other major ISPs have announced e-mail authentication initiatives in recent months, and without some way to identify spammers, a national Do Not E-Mail list would be useless, the FTC says in its report to Congress. The FTC received more than 7000 comments and advice from three computer scientists before issuing its report.

"Under current technology, any Do Not E-Mail list would become a do-spam list," Muris said at a press conference. "Consumers will be spammed if we do a registry and spammed if we do not."

Congress Promoted

Under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, which took effect in January, the FTC was 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 after a national Do Not Call telemarketing list, which has been popular with U.S. residents.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, did not have an immediate comment on the FTC's decision against creating a Do Not E-Mail list.

The FTC's decision to not move forward with the Do Not E-Mail list leaves consumers with no recourse against spammers, says Ray Everett-Church, counsel for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email. CAN-SPAM allows ISPs and state attorneys general to sue spammers, but not individual consumers, and a Do Not E-Mail list would have given consumers one way to fight back, Everett-Church says.

"Right now, consumers have no recourse against spam sent to them," Everett-Church says.

The FTC's report questions whether the security of a national Do Not E-Mail list could be guaranteed, but Everett-Church calls security a false concern. Combined with a private right to sue, a Do Not E-Mail list would give consumers the ammunition they need to fight spam, Everett-Church says.

"If you give people the ability to sue . . . there's really no need to secure the list," he adds.

User Recourses

The difference between the national Do Not Call list and a national Do Not E-Mail list is that most telemarketers are legitimate businesses that are easy to find. Many spammers advertise fraudulent products and hide their identities through false header information, open relays, and other means available on the Internet, Muris says.

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 Web sites and chat rooms, Muris recommends.

Congress could still require the FTC to create the Do Not E-Mail list, but Muris says Congress would have to pass a new bill for a Do Not E-Mail list to happen. As part of the FTC's spam-fighting plan required by CAN-SPAM, the FTC plans to host a workshop on e-mail authentication later this year.