“Spammed if you do, spammed if you don’t” was the message the Federal Trade Commission gave Congress yesterday regarding a proposed national do-not-e-mail registry.
“The fact is that without an effective system for authenticating the source of e-mail any registry of individual e-mail addresses will fail,” said FTC Chairman Timothy Muris, during a press conference. “We learned that when it comes to a do-not-e-mail registry, consumers will be spammed if we do a registry and spammed if we do not.”
In December 2003, Congress passed the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM Act), which included a directive for the FTC to develop a plan and timetable for establishing a national do-not-e-mail registry; and explain any practical, technical, security, privacy or enforcement concerns.
Despite the reported success of the FTC’s national do-not-call registry, which deals with unwanted telemarketing calls, the e-mail equivalent could actually have the opposite effect, according to the FTC’s findings.
“Most spammers who already violate a host of laws would ignore any requirement not to spam addresses in a do-not-e-mail database,” Muris said. “Even worse, they would use a registry as the source of valid and spammable addresses. It would be virtually impossible to prevent them from using such a compilation as a ready resource of millions of active e-mail addresses,” Muris said.
Muris added that while a national do-not-e-mail registry would be ineffective and burdensome for consumers, proposals that involve better authentication have significant potential.
“Fortunately, there is a solution with promise,” he said. “It involves strengthening the e-mail system so that spammers can’t hide the origins of their e-mail messages. The key is authentication. With domain level authentication in place, ISPs could better filter out messages sent by spammers using spoof headers, open relays and open proxies.”
Furthermore, law enforcement officials would benefit from domain level authentication because they could better identify the ISPs and domains used by spammers, according to the FTC.
“To help the private market find the right balance, and to help put the testing and wide-scale deployment of authentication standards on a fast track, the FTC will hold an Authentication Summit in the fall,” Muris said. “We hope to work with Congress, other federal partners and the tech industry to make sure that any authentication standards don’t have unintended consequences for non-spam e-mail.”
Quinn Jalli, director of privacy and ISP relations for San Mateo, Calif.-based Digital Impact, has met with the FTC several times on this issue and he agrees authentication is the key to the solution. Digital Impact provides online direct marketing services.
“The answer to spam is not more legislation because the problem with spam is not identifying the illegality of the act but rather the actor [himself]. The only way you are going to get the identities is through some sort of technical forensics, and that is what authentication seeks to do,” Jalli said.
“The fact that they are holding this authentication [summit] in the fall suggests that they really do see that part of the solution is bringing everybody together to talk about authentication. That is a very encouraging sign,” he said.
The Direct Marketing Association is heartened by the direction the FTC appears to be headed as well.
“I think the way [the FTC] positioned it is that there is legitimate e-mail marketing and there is spam,” said Louis Mastria, director of public and international affairs for the DMA.
“With increased focus on authentication, increased use and knowledge of the CAN-SPAM Act, and some increased law enforcement activity, it may render some of the other [suggested] tactics unnecessary. There has been a lot of mileage on the opt in/opt out debate but frankly the Nigerian widow was never going to ask for your opt-in permission,” Mastria said.
“If you can stop spam at the identity level and if you can put the fear of criminal and civil penalties on spammers in a very real and meaningful way, you start to get to the problem,” he added.
*EDiets.Com Increases Use of Television Advertising EDiets.com, Inc spent $3 million on television advertising during its fiscal second quarter. The company’s total ad spend for the quarter, which ended June 30, was $11 million.
Previously, the Deerfield Beach, FL-based online diet and healthy living site relied on Web-based advertising to attract new subscribers to its site.
“While our cost to acquire a member in the second quarter did not change significantly compared to the prior quarter, results from our initial television advertising campaigns have been encouraging and have exceeded the performance of some of our online ad buys,” said David Humble, chief executive officer of eDiets.com in a statement.
Humble continued, “It is clear that television has the potential to become a significant channel for us to acquire new members, with economics that we expect will improve over time as we optimize our spending mix.”
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