No Federal Do-Not-Spam Registry For Now 324
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "The AP reports today that the U.S. government has no plans to create a do-not-spam registry in the immediate future. Why not? They argue that the proper technology is not yet in place. 'A national do-not-e-mail registry, without a system in place to authenticate the origin of e-mail messages, would fail to reduce the burden of spam and may even increase the amount of spam received by consumers,' said the commission." The moral of the story is: never try. See the FTC's press release or their report (pdf).
Obligatory Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)
Wait wait wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Thank GOD! (Score:4, Funny)
Too Bad (Score:5, Funny)
Murphy's Law (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait wait wait... (Score:2, Funny)
Rule 1: (Score:3, Funny)
Great the FTC caught on to that..
Now if only all those idiots actually ordering Viagra, Vicodin, larger penisses and mortgage quotes would get the message..
Perhaps a more viable option for enforcement would be sting-operations, where if you buy a spamvertized good, you the exact opposite of the advertized benefit. Higher mortgage! Smaller penis!
When it finally goes up.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MORONS! (Score:3, Funny)
The FTC NASR regulations currently provide no direction in regards to the service being unavailable. They simply prohibit sending an unsolicited email without having first received an "ALLOWED" response within the last 5 days for any address, before sending the message.
As the regulation also provides a $5000 fine per mailing per address for noncompliance, mass mailers are holding their mails pending an emergency regulation expected to be issued later today. A spokesman for the National Association of Bulk Mailers opined "this calamity has brought our operations to a screeching halt". Without a YES response from the [anti-spam] server, he explained, they cannot legally send their critical informational messages.
Jorge McKnightson, FTC Compliance Officer (Electronic Mail), said "FTC is working to provide a solution, optimize global value-added users, engineering cross-platform computer-assisted e-business back-end out-of-the-box eyeballs driven by documented robust e-commerce as rapidly as federal viral process precision allows. The loss of competitive next-generation infrastructures is believed to have been caused by distributed B2C metrics which deoptimized probabilistic metrics
When pressed for a less obfuscated statement, McKnightson turned an interesting shade of puce, and mumbled what sounded like "We're working on it. The server got slashdotted."
Obligatory anti-spam checklist (Score:5, Funny)
Proper technology? (Score:5, Funny)
Unless I'm mistaken, we've had laser-guided missiles since the first gulf war which is all the technology we need to deal with spammers. It didn't take some Navy supercomputer to find Eric Head or Scott Richter and any half-assed napalm-delivery system would easily show them the error of their ways.
Re:I Don't Want the Gov't Telling Me What's Spam! (Score:4, Funny)
Political opinions? You want them?
Here's a clue: If it's bulk and you didn't ask for it, it's spam. It doesn't matter if it is a product you want, or an opinion you want to read, or a service you want.
People who care more about content than delivery -- "Oh, well, I didn't ask for that ad, but sure I need my penis enlarged!" "Hey, I could make a lot of money helping this exiled Nigerian prince!" "I'm awful glad senatorial candidate McDuff sent out 3.5 million emails (1 million of them outside his area) to let us all know he supports gun control." -- are what's known as a willing victim. And that one moron in a thousand is why there's a spam problem to begin with.
If it's spam, either report it, teach your filter it, or delete it. But do not put any put any weight in the content, even if you find it interesting.
Because little Joey Adams who went missing off the deck of his house in the summer of 1999 never actually went fucking missing, the FBI just took him back from the parent who didn't have custody of him.