FTC: Two-thirds of e-mail spam contains false claims

Computerworld - Two-thirds of all spam contains some kind of false information, according to a report released today by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
During the last six months of 2002, the FTC analyzed 1,000 randomly selected junk e-mail messages and found that 33% of the senders hide their true identities in the message's From line, in part by claiming to be someone who has a personal or business relationship with the recipient.
Beginning tomorrow, the FTC is holding a three-day Spam Forum to focus on the proliferation of unsolicited commercial e-mail and to explore the technical, legal and financial issues associated with it.
In the report released today, the FTC said many marketers put a misleading phrase in the message's Subject line, such as "your order's status." The agency also found little compliance with a number of state laws requiring that spam senders begin every Subject line with ADV to indicate that an e-mail contains an advertisement. Only about 2% of the messages studied used the abbreviation.
The FTC said 96% of the spam used to tout business and investment opportunities contained false information, while 48% of junk e-mail promoting health services or products and 47% of travel/leisure spam contained false information.
The FTC also found that the majority of spammers marketing pornography didn't let recipients know that the e-mails contained graphic images. And 41% of the spam containing adult images also contained false information in the From and Subject lines.
To coincide with the FTC's three-day public workshop on spam, SurfControl PLC, an e-mail filtering company in Scotts Valley, Calif., released a report indicating that U.S. business users overwhelmingly favor antispam legislation pending in Congress (see story).
In a national poll conducted this month, 86% of 1,600 business users contacted said they favor legislation that would outlaw spam that hides the identity of the sender or misleads the recipient about the content of the e-mail.
The survey was conducted for SurfControl by Public Opinion Strategies, an Alexandria, Va.-based national political and public affairs research firm.
In addition to supporting the legislation, 85% of business users said they would support their companies' use of technology to control spam.
Earlier this week, Sen. Charles Schumer, (D-N.Y.), said he plans to introduce new antispam legislation that would create a national "no e-mail" list similar to the recently enacted do-not-call lists aimed at curbing telemarketers. Schumer's proposal envisions the creation of a no-spam list under FTC authority. Citizens could register their e-mail addresses for inclusion on the list, which commercial e-mail senders would berequired to check before sending mass e-mails.
A separate measure, introduced by Sens. Conrad Burns, (R-Mont.), and Ron Wyden, (D-Ore.), would require all unsolicited marketing e-mail to have a valid return e-mail address so recipients can easily ask to be removed from mass e-mail lists. Marketers would also be prohibited under that bill from sending any further messages to a consumer who has asked them to stop.
Burns and Wyden's bill, known as the CAN-SPAM bill, or the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, has been introduced in Congress before but hasn't been passed into law.

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