- Spam is legal in the United States.
- Twenty-six states have enacted
anti-spam legislation, but it hasn't done much.
- A bill in Congress would require
companies to provide a valid return address on e-mail so
consumers could request to be removed from mailing lists.
- The Federal Trade Commission has
selectively cracked down on bogus business promotions.
- Currently, spam blocking falls
almost exclusively to individual consumers.
- If you've been the victim of e-mail
fraud, contact the FTC at uce@ftc.gov.
DON'T....
- Never respond to an unwanted commercial
message in order to unsubscribe from the mailing list. Answering
the e-mail alerts spammers that the account is active and
could result in more spam.
- Don't give out your Internet account
password to anyone. Don't leave Internet passwords taped
to your computer or in sight. Spammers can hijack an e-mail
account and send out thousands of e-mails.
- Do forward spam to your Internet
service provider or to the Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov
for analysis and possible prosecution. The FTC collects
an estimated 50,000 complaints about misleading e-mail messages
a day. AOL currently blocks over 800 million spam messages
every day, the equivalent of 23 e-mails from every AOL account
every day.
- Do be careful with your e-mail
address and other personal information when ordering products
and services from Web sites.
- If you have a personal Web page
or run a business Web site, do use computer coding to stop
spammers from scanning the page for e-mail addresses. In
other words, don't use the "click to e-mail" link, which
makes it very easy for someone to harvest your address.
- If setting up a new e-mail account,
consider using an unusual name. Ordinary names are easy
for crafty scammers to use a technique called "dictionary
spamming," where unscrupulous marketers comb Internet domain
for common name combinations.
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