posted on October 23, 2000 09:36:29 PM new
S.759
Sponsor: Sen Murkowski, Frank H. (introduced 3/25/1999)
Latest Major Action: 3/26/1999 Referred to Senate committee
Title: A bill to regulate the transmission of unsolicited commercial electronic mail on the Internet, and for other purposes.
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TITLE(S): (italics indicate a title for a portion of a bill)
SHORT TITLE(S) AS INTRODUCED:
Inbox Privacy Act of 1999
OFFICIAL TITLE AS INTRODUCED:
A bill to regulate the transmission of unsolicited commercial electronic mail on the Internet, and for other purposes.
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STATUS: (color indicates Senate actions) (Floor Actions/Congressional Record Page References)
3/26/1999:
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce.
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COMMITTEE(S):
Committee/Subcommittee: Activity:
Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Referral
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RELATED BILL DETAILS:
***NONE***
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COSPONSORS(5), ALPHABETICAL [followed by Cosponsors withdrawn]: (Sort: by date)
Sen Burns, Conrad R. - 3/25/1999 Sen Durbin, Richard J. - 5/20/1999
Sen Reid, Harry M. - 3/25/1999 Sen Snowe, Olympia J. - 10/6/1999
Sen Torricelli, Robert G. - 3/25/1999
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SUMMARY AS OF:
3/25/1999--Introduced.
Inbox Privacy Act of 1999 - Prohibits a person from initiating the transmission of unsolicited commercial electronic mail (mail) to an individual who submits to such person a request that such mail not occur. Presumes constructive authorization of mail when the recipient secures a good or service from, or otherwise responds electronically to, an offer.
Prohibits the initiation of mail to any electronic mail address served by a domain if the domain owner has elected not to receive such mail at such domain, with exceptions. Provides requirements for domain owners electing not to receive such mail, including notification to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the domain's customers (if such domain owner is an Internet service provider or interactive computer service provider). Requires the service provider to notify its customers of their individual authority to receive such mail, and provides for customer election to continue to receive such mail. Requires the service provider to maintain and make public a list of customers electing to receive such mail. Requires persons initiating transmission of mail to: (1) include certain identifying information; (2) agree to cease such transmission upon request; and (3) ensure the accuracy of all Internet routing information included in such transmission.
(Sec. 3) Authorizes the FTC to prescribe rules for defining and prohibiting deceptive acts or practices in connection the promotion, advertisement, offer for sale, or sale of goods or services on or by means of the Internet, with special provisions addressing such acts or practices in connection with such mail.
(Sec. 4) Authorizes the FTC to investigate and enforce regulations for violations of this Act. Requires the FCC to maintain an Internet web page concerning domain owners and customers who have made elections described above.
(Sec. 5) Authorizes a State to bring a civil action on behalf of its residents against persons transmitting such mail. Requires such State to notify the FTC of such action.
(Sec. 6) Authorizes Internet or interactive computer service providers to bring a civil action in U.S. district court for violations of this Act, with injunctive relief and damages.
(Sec. 7) Preempts State and local laws regarding the transmission or receipt of such mail.
posted on October 24, 2000 04:15:13 AM new
Actually, if you look at the date, it DIED in committe somewhere.
"Prohibits a person from initiating the transmission of unsolicited commercial electronic mail (mail) to an individual who submits to such person a request that such mail not occur."
Translation - anyone can spam the hell out of you until you tell them to stop. It's "opt-out" and it is not acceptable because it gives every one of the millions of businesses in the USA one free whack at your email. Take a look at the yellow pages fro your area. If each of those businesses sent you just ONE email and you had to send one "don't email me ever again" ... how many emails a day would you be getting and sending just to stay off the spammer's lists.
OPT-IN (where they wait for you to ask for the info) is the only way email advertising will work.
"Presumes constructive authorization of mail when the recipient secures a good or service from, or otherwise responds electronically to, an offer."
Meaning that EVERY business you have ever done business with is authorized to spam you ... no matter what your contact was with them.
maps.vix.com has a much better solution ... spam and the internet has a way to cease communication with you by rejecting your spam at the routers.
posted on October 24, 2000 04:31:23 AM new
Perceptive analysis as usual,abacaxi. This (were it still alive) is akin to the law governing telemarketing: Every time a telemarketer phones you, you can tell them "Put me on your 'do not call' list," and then they can't call you again. But you have to tell this to EVERY one that calls. Something really bad we must've done in anotehr life put us on some telemarketing list, and we got a couple calls per night for about a month until I supposed I'd finally spoken to every company that bought the list we were on. Utterly hellacious, and all it takes is for our name to be sold again to somebody else....sigh.
posted on October 24, 2000 06:06:19 AM new
Talk about Spam........Sat. I received an email to Unscribe.
They gave me an address in the body of their email where to send it to. I did Unscribe.
Then I received another email saying it didn't work and I needed to do it again but they said I needed to
change the body of the email...I did that, again
I received another email from them, but I did not respond.
Sunday Morning......I received 86 emails from people saying THEY received my Unscribe email!!!!!
I sent a copy of the originators 3 emails to Spam cop, and my ISP provider and to the abuse@ the originators ISP.
I don't know what else to do!.......except.....I will never send another UNSCRIBE email again!!
Has anyone else ever heard of something like this happening?
posted on October 24, 2000 09:10:40 AM new
I just got home from a week's vacation. I had *46* e-mails, ALL Spam. The majority I receive are about me accepting credit cards. They come from addresses with "jp" (Japan) or from "edu" (college).
I wish I could just change my e-mail and they would disappear. I have MANY on my "ignore" list but they use different addresses all the time.
posted on October 24, 2000 09:51:28 AM new
There is very little chance that ever asking to be unsubscribed from UNsolicited mail will ever work.
If you use the usual unsub notice at the bottom of MOST Spam it becomes PROOF that you have a valid e mail address and you have just confirmed it to them. Your now proven valid address is worth a lot more to the scumbags that wallow in the mire of Spam and they can now sell your address to the 'millions CD' folks at a high premium.
It is often that you will not even get unsubbed from some seemingly legitimate lists.
Best advice is to never hit the unsub link, ever ... unless it is a legitimate list you have actually subscribed to, and now want off.
Opt out (where you are put on, but have to ask to be taken off) is Spam, pure and simple. The only legitimate email marketing is by using DOUBLE OPT IN (where you subscribe, then they send you another mail to confirm that it was YOU subbing, and you send it back to confirm.)
Just hitting the delete button on Spam isn't a long term cure either, as it continues to come.
One solution is to frequent http://spamcop.net set up a FREE account, and forward ALL spam to them. They will write a LART (lame user attitude adjustment tool) letter that you can with one click send to the correct place(s) to report it. It does work!
Spam will never end, and legislation (especially the bad one mentioned above) will never be in the users best interest as long as congress is influenced by the likes of the Direct Marketing Association (and you can bet they are).
The best we can do is shut them down one Spam at a time, and show the Spammers it is not a profit making effort for them.
posted on October 24, 2000 09:52:25 AM new
HCQ - I agree!
During the past month, every member of my family, including my cat and my deceased mother has received an application for a credit card. I phoned the company that is making these offers (and adding to the combustible loading in my home before their mailings hit the trash bin outside) and asked them to take us off their list. They said they couldn't (!). I filed a complaint with the BBB about their junk mail and I haven't had any more since ...
psalms139 - by the very act of 'unsubscribing', you are verifying to the SPAMMER that your email address is legit. You can expect hundreds of new SPAM messages now
posted on October 24, 2000 10:03:18 AM newI phoned the company that is making these offers... and asked them to take us off their list.
A lot of them include a postpaid envelope for the application- if you get really bored, you can take the junk they mailed you, stuff it all in, and send it back.
It may not solve the junk mail problem, but it does provide work for postal employees and mailroom clerks.
posted on October 24, 2000 10:21:20 AM new
All of those credit card merchant spams are from marketing companies that sell the replies to 3rd rate merchant account companies. The only why to fight back from those spams IS TO REPLY... use a fake email address or some old webmail acct, and give them a name and number to call (I use my modem line). If the merchant company pays $.10 a name for a thousand bad leads they will get really pissed.
The courts have ruled that spammers had a right to spam. California tried to pass an anti-spam law that required all spam to start with ADV: it was declared an unconstitutional attempt to regulate interstate trade.
There was one thing I liked about that bill... that fact that it protects the right of a merchant to email someone they have a business relationship with unless that person opts out. I happen to disagree with Ebay claim that buyers are NOT my customers and I have no right to market to them
posted on October 24, 2000 10:36:40 AM new
RB : Yikes! I hope that won't happen!
Trust me I have learned that I will never respond to a Spam email except to send it to Spam Cop.
Getting 86 emails all at once was not pleasant...esp. when they all said I had sent them an email!
kiki2: I feel for ya! I hope you sent all those emails to Spam Cop?
"The best we can do is shut them down one Spam at a time, and show the Spammers it is not a profit making effort for them."
Ken: I agree with you. Sadly, it seems that is our only option right now.
posted on October 24, 2000 11:00:04 AM new
psalms139 - I had one specific eBayer (NARU'd two days ago .... Finally!) who signed me up to a few hundred teen sex sites using one of my hotmail acounts. I was getting all kinds of "Please verify" SPAMS from these sites, I ignored them, and eventually they just went away.
posted on October 24, 2000 01:28:21 PM newFrogleg: Like the others pointed out, this bill was a rather weak bill. There were, at some point (maybe not when this bill was introduced), two other spam regulation bills, one somewhat stronger, and one very strong (sorry, don't remember the names).
Opt-out is very consumer unfriendly, exactly how others pointed out (you'd have to opt out with potentially many multiples of thousands of companies). In an age where we're now bombarded with direct marketing from four dim, usually unwelcome corners (junk mail, telemarketing, door-to-door solicition, and now spam), double opt-in is the only honorable form of direct marketing, in my (very strong) opinion.
(The "double" part is confirmation of the email address, so some prankster can't go opting your email address into a bunch of marketing lists. )
In the "Information Age," consumers have easier access to more information on companies and products than ever before, where we could find information for ourselves, so it's ironic we're being force-fed even more direct marketing.
RB and others: be sure to shred credit card offers, as some list or encode information that is best out of the hands of dumpster divers. Even I was rather stunned to hear that there are reportedly 750,000 cases of identity theft each year, and some of your key "handles" are listed on some credit card offers.
eoi: While I do actually understand what you say about feeling there would be an existing prior relationship, you'll find most of your prior customers would still see sending them further missives as spamming.
Spam's formal name is "unsolicited commercial email" (UCE), which is actually the best definition of it too -- the one most people perceive it, in formal terms or not. If a seller emails an ad for a new item to his/her previous buyers by email, it would be unsolicited (the buyers did not personaly ask for or give explicit permission to receive such ads), commercial (advertising a product for sale, or for sale in an auction in this case), and email (obviously). That's UCE.
Just because offline stores do something similar (minus the email) too, doesn't make it welcome. I don't want the junk mail from local stores I happen to shop at either. I go to a store to buy a product, not buy a product and a bunch of extra, unwanted junk.
On eBay, if every one of the sellers I've bought from in the past sent me one ad a week, I'd be swimming in nearly ten additional pieces of spam a day. If they sent me one on every new auction they had, I'd throw my hands up in disgust, change my email address, unregister from eBay, an never frequent an online auction again.
Now I'm not saying all or even a significant number of sellers would do this, but spam is almost universally reviled, and many consider it an even lower form of advertising than telemarketing, which itself is usually unwelcome by the vast majority of people.
If a seller did this months later, the buyer might not even recognize the seller's name or email address, and may report the seller to his/her ISP. Even if they did recognize the seller, they might not welcome such UCE, report the seller anyway, and/or turn many buyers off of any chance of their frequenting the seller's auctions again.
From what I hear, even the Direct Marketing Association, which fights rabidly so their members can push whatever junk they want on people (junk mail, pushy telemarketing, etc. ), perceives the current volume and nature of spam as diminishing any hopes of email marketing ever being perceived as a "legitimate" form of advertising.
People also fight spam because if it were ever legitimized, the volume of spam would likely jump by one or more magnitudes.
There are reasons why spam is so extremely controversial and reviled, and these are some of the main reasons.
eoi: The one good form of direct marketing is through an opt-in. If you put something in your EOA that says something like (as an example), "If you wish to receive email updates on my eBay offerings, please say 'Add me to your mailing' list," and specify the maximum number of emails you would send in any one month, and how they could unsubscribe.
I'd find that perfectly acceptable (I'd never ask to be added, but I'd find your asking to be an honorable act, and might be more willing to buy from you in the future), but I'm not sure how eBay interprets even these offers, so don't go doing anything on just the basis of my opinion.
It might look like a little more bother, but your customers will appreciate you far more (those who want the mail, AND those who don't), and you'll likely save yourself headaches (potentially nasty letters, buyers getting turned off from your future auctions, maybe being kicked off your ISP).
----
What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
[ Edited for UBB -- and some grammar. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Oct 24, 2000 01:32 PM ]
posted on October 24, 2000 01:49:04 PM new
RB: That's just awful! People can be so spiteful!
That person needs to be caught.
Did you report it to Spam Cop or is there anything you can do to that person who spitefully did that?
Good Luck to you too!!
Thanks!
