Recently a publicist offered me a nice little scoop involving two of her clients, who planned to post a list of 10 U.S. advertisers that have been flouting the Can-Spam Act of 2003 by ignoring
consumers' demands to unsubscribe. Instead of cutting down on spam, attempted delisting just generated more mounds of e-mail. Would I be interested? Sure, I said. I hate spam as much as the next guy
-- provided the next guy thinks spammers should be forced to visit every single person they have bombarded with junk e-mail and manually delete each ad. I also knew just how murky a world spam is, and
how difficult it is to police, since nothing and no one is what it seems to be. After all, on the internet, just about everyone wears a mask, especially shameless hawkers trying to cram your inbox
with come-ons for penile enhancements and lower mortgage rates.
Read the whole story at Wired, June 2, 2005 »