I got an e-mail this evening from the "National Anti Spam Registry", telling me if I go register at their website, I can opt out of receiving spam.

An appealing idea... but I was suspicious (I'm SO cynical, I know...), did a Google search on the name & found the following article

The highlights (for those not interested enough to check it out for themselves) include:

"...CAN-SPAM [legislation] calls ... for a "a nationwide marketing Do-Not-E-Mail registry."

"...also specifically mentions that the registry is not to be implemented less than 9 months after the enactment of the act. ...October 1, 2004 is the earliest that we could see its "nationwide marketing Do-Not-E-Mail registry."

[snip]

"The site is filled with misspellings and grammatical errors. Some of what the site claims to do is plainly phony, some of it tempting, but
suspicious, and some of it is impenetrable gobbledygook.

"But who is behind the National Anti Spam Registry? The only contact information on the page, apart from a few e-mail addresses, is a postal box in Hammond, La. Much more interesting is the Whois information for nationalantispamregistry.com. The address for all the contacts is in Tonawanda, N.Y. ...

"On closer inspection, the zip code... [is] not a valid zip code), and there doesn't appear to be a street with that specific name...

"Now, it's not illegal to put inaccurate information in Whois records... but it's suspicious from an organization trying to engender trust in the public.

[snip]

"The real fun begins when you read the site's privacy policy. I suppose it's just a stock privacy policy on which they did a search-and-replace.

[big snip of excerpt from the privacy policy]

"This doesn't give me a warm fuzzy about registering with the National Anti Spam Registry Corp. It tells me that I will get e-mail from other companies with which I did not register. "Anti Spam Registry" indeed! In addition, I don't take much comfort from the company's assertion that I can opt out later.

"So CAN-SPAM is not even up and running and we're already seeing entrepreneurs sleazing off of it."

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Bottom line -- it's yet another angle on trying to sucker you into "registering" your @ddress with them so they know they've got a live one. Quelle surprise...

Cheers,

YY