"USA: Know your spam rights" - Your rights 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. - Do's 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. Do zap spam. Delete e-mails from strangers immediately. - Don'ts 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. Don’t list your e-mail address when entering contests, sweepstakes or promotions. Don’t list your primary e-mail address when posting to discussion forums on Web sites. Don’t give permission for companies or Web sites to share your e-mail address with partners or affiliates. Source: Steven Waldman / Slade.Com
