VA Spam Law Overturned

The Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled that the state's anti-spam law is unconstitutional. The Court wrote that: "the statute is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution." See this Washington Post article for more.

Unsolicited Text Message Suit Given Go Ahead

TMobile's attempt to dismiss a class action suit filed by disgruntled TMobile users has been dismissed. The suit, Zaldivar v. T-Mobile USA, alleges that TMobile forces cell phone users to pay for unsolicited text messages. Filed on July 15 in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Washington state, the suit alleges breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and violations of Washington’s Consumer Protection Act.

McAfee's Spam Experiment

In an effort to better understand spam, McAfee recently commissioned 50 people to surf the net without any anti-spam/spyware protection for a period of a month. At the end of a month, the 50 participants had received 104,000 unsolicited messages, totalling around 70 messages a day for each participant. One of the findings was the amount emanating from outside the US. Of the 104,000 letters, only 23,233 were in English. During the month-long experiment, McAfee encouraged the participants to log their experiences in a blog. Check out the blog here.

New Spam Rules Go Into Effect

New CAN-SPAM rules, published in May, went into effect yesterday. Among other things, the new rules clarify who is obligated to comply with CAN-SPAM, clarify the definition of “sender,” and include new unsubscribe requirements. See this article for more info. For help complying with CAN-SPAM, including the new rules, see this White Paper from ExactTarget (free registration required).

New Guidelines To Deal With SPAM

This article discusses new guidelines released by The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) intended to reduce spam. According to the article, the new guidelines (which do not appear to be available online) recommend that ISPs use separate servers for received and forwarded e-mails, and that they block port 25, through which spam travels. Even if the guidelines were successfully adopted, though, there's no indication that they would be successful. Still, this might be a start.

New CAN-SPAM Rules

The FTC recently (May 12) recently published a new final rule implementing the CAN-SPAM Act (15 U.S.C. 7701-7713). For a brief overview of the new rules, see here. For the Press Release announcing the new rules, see here. For a more detailed overview of the rules, see this article from B2B.

Spam Ring Indicted

A federal indictment was recently unsealed in Detroit, charging 11 people with violations of the CAN SPAM Act. The DOJ release alleges that the defendants set up "an international scheme to make money by manipulating stock prices through illegal spam e-mail promotions." The indictment also alleges that the defendants tried to send their spam through the use of botnets.

A Setback For Spammers

See this article from PC World: "Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) said this week they've discovered a critical weakness in the spam ecosystem that could be used to help cut off the promise of economic returns fuelling the huge growth in spam levels." For a brief history of spam, see this article from the New Yorker entitled "Damn Spam."