Commentary
Just an Online Minute... To "ADV:" or not to "ADV:"
- by Masha Geller , August 11, 2003
One of the most heatedly debated elements of the legislation currently being considered by our esteemed governing bodies is the requirement to identify all unsolicited commercial email with an "ADV:" tag in the subject line.
I, much like everyone else out there, get an enormous amount of spam, and on top of the filters that control my inbox activity on the ISP level, I dutifully maintain an ever-growing block list in my Outlook (although that doesn't really seem to help because every day there's someone new spamming me.) I also get extremely delete-happy every morning when I first log in, sorting emails by sender and subject and deleting in bulk without much thought.
This morning, however, some establishment thought it wise to send some junk to an unsuspecting list, but to make it look legitimate, they added "ADV:" to the subject line. My eyes skipped the rest of the subject line and went straight for the body of the email, which turned out to be - three guesses? - a pitch to make me give online gambling a try.
I quickly remembered that the last "ADV:" email in my inbox turned out to be spam as well (I didn't pay any attention to it at the time for whatever reason), and in a well-practiced sequence of clicks, barred anything and everything with an "ADV:" tag from entering my inbox ever again.
Stepping back to look at the big picture for a second, legislators are still actively pushing this "ADV:" thing (without so much as a hint of an understanding of what they're dealing with, I might add) and by the time it goes through the motions to become a federal regulation (IF it ever does,) spammers will have gotten every email user on the planet to add "ADV:" to their block list, ultimately preventing legitimate commercial email from getting through.
So, dear lawmakers, what's next on your agenda?
