MWS Newsletter Volume 1: Issue 3

Complete Archives and Subscription Information

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INTRODUCTION

The amount of spam I get has gotten way out of control lately. Personally,
at this point I welcome any email from anyone I know or email that I asked
for. Right now, my ratio of work or personal email vs. spam is about 50:1.

It seems like communicating with real people via email is getting
increasingly difficult. As a result, I've been thinking about how this email
is received and perceived. Do you find it valuable or interesting? Please
send me email and let me know! I would love to hear from you...maybe I can even improve my ratio of good email to SPAM.

This issue was originally going to be on understanding Web site statistics.
However, given the confusion surrounding the federal anti-spam law that was
just signed, I thought it would be more timely to talk about exactly what
that law does and how it will affect you.

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts and comments,

- Chris Minnick

THE CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

On December 16, the president signed into law the 'Controlling the Assault
of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003', or the 'CAN-SPAM
Act of 2003'. The new spam law is an "opt-out" law. This means that it
allows businesses to send commercial emails to people with whom they have no
business relationship as long as they are truthful about who they are and
they respect people's requests to not receive future emails.

Here are a few quick facts about the law:

• Takes effect on January 1, 2004
• Preempts existing state anti-spam laws, including California's much
  stricter "opt-in" law that is also scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1
• Was largely written by the Direct Marketing Association
• Makes it illegal to send commercial emails with fake or misleading header
  information (such as originating server, FROM address, and so forth)
• Outlaws the sending of mail to addresses gathered through many
  questionable means, such as spidering of Web sites
• Requires that commercial emails containing sexually-oriented material
  contain "warning labels"
• Requires the FCC to begin considering the creation of a "Do Not Spam"
  registry within 6 months.

Although many of the provisions of the new law sound promising, the reality
is that this new law is universally seen as a very weak and is unlikely to
produce much relief from SPAM any time soon. As the chairman of the
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE,
http://www.cauce.org) said, "This law does not stop a single spam from being
sent. It only makes that spam slightly more truthful. It also gives a
federal stamp of approval for every legitimate marketer in the U.S. to start
using unsolicited e-mail as a marketing tool. Congress has listened to the
marketers and not to consumers, and we have no faith that this law will
significantly reduce the amount of spam that American Internet users
receive."

As a result of this law, the amount unsolicited email from legitimate
business may increase. We believe that this will ultimately harm the
reputations of business that play by stricter rules (including many of our
clients), or force them to adopt 'opt-out' policies in order to compete.
Another fundamental problem with this law (and with any anti-spam law) is
that the spammers who haven't already done so will simply move their
operations out of the United States.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to reduce the amount of
unsolicited email you receive. Here are some of your options:

• Use a server-side spam filter. Many ISP and email providers, particularly
  web-based email providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo! currently have SPAM
  filters on their servers. These filters use a set of rules to detect
  messages that may be SPAM and to filter them into a special folder.
• Use a client-side spam filter. Client-side spam filters are not as
  effective as server-side spam filters, because they require you to download
  your email before they filter out the spam. If you have a slow internet
  connection, a client-side spam filter may be only slightly better than no
  spam filter.
• Take precautions to avoid increasing the amount of SPAM you get. Some good
  tips can be found at: http://www.spamrecycle.com/antispamthings.htm

I have hopes that a solution will eventually be found to the increasingly
serious problem of SPAM. However, until that day comes, the best thing we
can do is to avoid reading unsolicited email and to find technological
solutions to our individual or company-wide problems.

In case you're curious, the solution that I'm currently using involves a
combination of server-side filtering of email and client-side filtering
using Cloudmark Software's SpamNet (http://www.spamnet.com). This solution is FAR from perfect, and hundreds of spam messages still make it through to my inbox each week, but it's a start.

Good luck, and please let me know if you have any questions about anything in this issue of the Minnick Web Services newsletter.

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Chris Minnick
Minnick Web Services
www.minnickweb.com
www.ebookhost.com
Phone: 916-551-1453
Fax: 916-551-1454

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FUTURE ISSUE PREVIEW:

Future issues of the Minnick Web Services newsletter will cover topics such as:

Understanding Web site Stats
Basics of Web Design
Usability
Accessibility
Important New Web Technologies
Evaluating New Web Technologies
How Search Engines Work
Search Engine Optimization

If you would like to suggest a topic for a future newsletter issue, please send mail to newsletter@minnickweb.com

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