This will come as no surprise. The Bush administration, in it's infinite stupidity, wrote a law to deal with Spam that made null laws like the one in California that had some teeth to it. The feds put in a law that makes spam legal now as long as an "opt-out" line is in it. So now if you want it to stop you have to (in theory) open every spam, read it to find the opt-out line, and send an email to that party via that link. Makes one wonder if perhaps some of those republicans up on the hill have invested in those companies that send porn, viagra, and home mortgage messages? Anyway, the new law isn't working. Like anyone thought it would?



Study: Most Spam Not Compliant With Law

January 15, 2004 01:59 PM EST


NEW YORK - Only 10 percent of junk e-mails comply with a new federal anti-spam law, according to two days' worth of messages analyzed by a spam filtering vendor.

The law, which took effect Jan. 1, does not prohibit unsolicited commercial e-mail as long as senders follow a set of rules, including using a correct subject line, a physical mailing address and a way to decline future mailings.

But most senders failed to do even that, Audiotrieve LLC said.

The Boxborough, Mass., company, which sells the InBoxer filter, has so-called honeypot e-mail accounts created solely to attract spam, and it analyzed 1,000 messages collected last weekend.

Only 102 of the messages met all the law's requirements, though Audiotrieve did not verify whether the physical address and unsubscribe mechanism worked. Of the remaining 898 messages, two-thirds had no unsubscribe link, and none had physical addresses.

The finding should come as no surprise to users who returned from the holidays greeted with pitches for Viagra and low-interest mortgages.

"Companies that already act at the margins of the law seem to also ignore these new regulations," said Roger Matus, Audiotrieve's chief executive.