Before the CAN-SPAM – Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing act is approved, the House of Representatives must pass a complimentary measure.
The bill would require truthful return addresses and email headers, notification the email is advertising, and inclusion of a postal address. The Federal Trade Commission, states’ attorneys general and ISPs will be able to sue violators.
Spammers using address harvesting or dictionary attacks get triple damages, which are capped at $3 million in civil cases. Spam sent by legitimate marketers would not be affected by the bill, provided they abide by the opt-out and header-truthfulness provisions.
A late amendment to the bill also calls for the FTC to write rules for the labeling of pornographic and non-pornographic spam, for the creation of a nationwide Do Not Spam opt-out list, and for financial rewards for those who track down spammers.
Amendments were also introduced to make a criminal offense of certain spam practices, such as spoofing your IP address in spam, hacking a computer to send spam from it, using open relays to send deceptive spam, and falsifying header information.
This article was based on material originally published by ComputerWire.
