The Email Wars

The FTC says that the CAN SPAM act is starting to show some legs. Looks like they are seeing a leveling off in spam. Tell that to some of our honeypots that continue to collect junk at high rates every day. We hope that this means that legitimate opt in marketers are starting to truly march to best practices and laws. Join us for an upcoming Webinar in January on Opt in Best Practices.

Visit www.eroi.com/webinar.htm to sign up for an alert. Opt in of course.

About 70 percent of the world’s e-mail messages continue to be spam. But the number is leveling off, which federal officials on Tuesday cited as evidence that a law enacted two years ago is working.

At a press conference here, the Federal Trade Commission released a report (click here for PDF), delivered last week to Congress, that said the so-called Can-Spam Act is “effective in providing protection for consumers.”

Can-Spam has permitted the agency to pursue lawsuits against spammers and has spurred adoption of commercial e-mail “best practices,” such as including an “opt out” link and the sender’s postal address in any unsolicited message, said Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

What remains unclear, however, is how effective the law has been. Statistics compiled by antispam companies show that the total number of junk e-mail messages has leaped 62 percent in the last year.

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