Spam my blog and I report your site to Google for banning. You've been warned!
« A slightly modified irritater | Main | New spam run. Different IP number »
January 19, 2005
FTC stock response
I only got a stock letter response from the FTC. Totally off the point, of course.
In fact, it seems most people I talk to completely miss the point unless I make them see this isn't about e-mail. And usuallly that entails calling them.
Here's the FTC letter, with light munging:
Dear Ann Elisabeth:
Thank you for your letter concerning your receipt of unwanted unsolicited
commercial e-mail (commonly referred to as "UCE," "spam," "junk e-mail,"
or "bulk e-mail"). You are not alone. Survey research presented at the
Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) June 1997 Privacy Workshop indicated
that almost all consumers who receive unsolicited commercial e-mail
strongly dislike receiving it.
The strong public outcry against UCE has prompted Congress and numerous
state legislatures to seek a solution to the problem. In fact, Virginia,
Nevada, California, and Washington all have statutes governing the
sending of UCE. During the Senate's last session, it passed a bill, S.
1618, which would have regulated the sending of UCE; however, it was not
acted upon by the House of Representatives. It is likely that additional
legislation will be introduced in Congress this year.
The Federal Trade Commission has responded to the problem of UCE by
bringing a number of law enforcement actions against senders of deceptive
UCE and establishing an electronic mailbox to which consumers may forward
the fraudulent UCE they receive, spam at uce dotgov. Currently, this mailbox
receives up to 4,500 forwarded unsolicited commercial e-mails each day.
After reviewing UCE forwarded to the mailbox, Commission staff identified
the 12 scams that are most likely to arrive in consumers' e-mail boxes.
Enclosed please find a Consumer Alert identifying the Dirty Dozen.
UCE ends up in your e-mail box after an e-mail marketer buys a list of
e-mail addresses from a list broker, who compiles it by "harvesting"
addresses from the Internet. If your e-mail address appeared in a
newsgroup posting, on a web site, in a chat room or in an online
service's membership directory, it may have found its way onto one of
those lists. The marketer then uses special software that can send
hundreds of thousands -- even millions -- of e-mail messages to the
addresses on the list.
Our advice to consumers who receive UCE is not to respond to the message
or sender in any way. In other words, do not hit the "reply" button.
Why? Because by replying to the message, you are letting the sender know
that the e-mail address he or she purchased from a list agent is in fact
a "live" e-mail account and that you received his or her last message.
You inevitably will receive more UCE as a result.
Although some messages may be from legitimate marketers, many are
fraudulent solicitations from scam artists who make promises they have no
intention of keeping, so your best course of action is to delete the
message. You should also consider complaining to your Internet Service
Provider (ISP) and, if you can identify it, the sender's ISP. In
addition, the FTC is interested in the types of UCE consumers receive, so
feel free to forward it to us at spam at uce dotgov. If you responded to a UCE
and believe you have been scammed, please let the FTC know by using the
FTC's on-line complaint form which is available at www.ftc.gov.
Unfortunately, right now, there is no way to stop receiving unsolicited
bulk e-mails, just as there is no way to stop receiving junk mail at your
home. To reduce the number of bulk e-mails you receive you should: 1)
to the extent possible, keep your e-mail address, as well as other
personally identifying information, to yourself (e.g., when registering
or purchasing online do not provide your e-mail address unless the site
needs to send you a password or other vital information); 2) make sure
your ISP is aware of your preference to not receive UCE; and 3) not reply
to UCE.
Some states require a bulk e-mail sender to provide an e-mail address
within his or her bulk e-mails to which consumers may respond in order to
be removed from the sender's e-mail list, a so-called "remove option."
Check with your state attorney general to determine whether your state
has this requirement.
Another approach to eliminating unwanted commercial e-mail solicitations
is the use of filters. A filter is a system that examines incoming
e-mail messages, blocking the delivery of messages that appear to be UCE.
Filtering may be applied either by the e-mail user's ISP or by the
individual user. Filtering is an imperfect solution: Some UCE manages
to evade the filter, and there is a risk of over-filtering, or blocking
messages that the user would like to receive. A July 1998 report,
entitled "Report to the Federal Trade Commission of the Ad-Hoc Working
Group on Unsolicited Commercial Email," contains an excellent discussion
of the issues related to controlling UCE. It is available at
www.cdt.org/spam.
I hope that you find the above information helpful in addressing this
issue.
Sincerely yours,
Consumer Response Center
Enclosures:
1. Trouble @ The In Box (6/2000) (ALT-027)
Posted by Ann at January 19, 2005 12:15 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.annelisabeth.com/blog/mt-tb.cgi/117
Comments
Posted by: Anonymous at January 19, 2005 12:15 AM