Anti Spam Laws in the United States
Spam laws in the U.S.
On January 1, 2004, the CAN-SPAM Act, went into effect in the US. This law puts specific requirements on senders of commercial email, including providing a valid physical postal address, honoring unsubscribe requests within a specific timeframe.
The CAN-SPAM Act has a number of provisions that differ from those commonly found in state anti-spam laws.
- Using “harvesting” or “dictionary attacks” to find email addresses is specifically outlawed
-A company can be held liable for permitting the use of spam to promote it;
- Flagrant violators (such as those who engage in fraud, send large numbers of emails, or are repeat offenders) are subject to prison terms. Service providers and state agencies may sue violators.
- Email recipients may not sue for damages, although the Act authorizes “bounties” for individuals who report violators to the authorities .
A total of 37 states passed laws regulating unsolicited electronic mail or “spam.” State anti-spam laws range from narrow provisions directed at sexually-oriented email to comprehensive acts imposing a wide variety of restrictions.
Common provisions of state anti-spam laws:
- Require the sender of an email to correctly identify oneself.
- Forbid a sender to place misleading routing information in an email.
- Make it illegal for a sender to use another’s Internet domain name without permission
- Bar the distribution of software designed to falsify the sender, routing information, or subject line of an email;
- Require a sender to provide a means by which a recipient can ask not to be contacted;
- Mandate that a label (typically, “ADV:” or “ADV:ADLT”) appear in the subject line of an email containing advertising or sexually-oriented material;
- Entitle a recipient or an Internet service provider to sue violators; and Impose criminal penalties.
Tags: Internet Marketing, spam, United States, Website