FTC to Crack Down on Adult Content Spam

Spam laws are largely flaunted by commercial mail senders. However, the FTC has a long track record of enforcing regulations against adult content when the opportunity comes up. Spammers present it with that opportunity on a daily basis.

CAN-SPAM specifically requires that sexually explicit spam be labeled as such in the subject line. It almost never is. The concern here is quite real. A lot of the images presented in such spam are pretty nasty, even by my standards. If it is not at least labeled, there's no way for spam filters to reliably keep it out of the eyes of children.

Spammers of course don't want to label their messages in any reliable way. If all spam had a label, it would be incredibly easy for antispam email systems to delete it at the server before delivery. Internet service providers would readily advertise this feature. SpamButcher's internal rule set could be reduced down to a single line of code and there would be no need for advanced anti-spam technologies like fuzzy logic. If all adult content spam was labeled, none of it would be delivered. So, it's not labeled.

Many spam messages that attempt to comply with some aspects of CAN-SPAM do so in a round about way. They often provide for an opt-out mechanism, but use difficult or uncommon language to express the notion of unsubscribing.

The SpamButcher spam protection software can be downloaded from this website as a free 21-day trial.

One requirement of CAN-SPAM that spammers almost always ignore is providing a physical address. If I sent out spam to 14 million people, I wouldn't want them to know where I live either.

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