What the CAN-SPAM Act Did About Email Spam

In 2003, the CAN-SPAM Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush. It was meant to be the standard for sending commercial email and was looked to by many to be the way to end spam. While many believe that spam is just annoying, spam can actually plug up your computer with viruses and can be extremely dangerous. Most look to the CAN-SPAM Act to get rid of spam in their inbox, but does it work?

Under the CAN-SPAM Act, any email message which is an advertisement is not allowed to take too much of your inbox space. Advertisers are, however, allowed to send messages to you as long as they include a way to unregister yourself from their email list in the email that they send you. Still, there are a few problems with the CAN-SPAM Act.

First of all, just because you click unregister doesn´t meant that you´ll stop receiving emails from these companies. Many companies actually take your unregistering as the cue that someone is actually at the email address and start sending more spam, often from a different address.

The big problem with the CAN-SPAM Act is that it´s virtually impossible for the government to enforce it. If you receive tons of spam email, you can report it, but it is unlikely that anyone will do anything about it, especially if you´re talking to the government. They have so few people to track down dangerous criminals that a little bit of spam is not a very big deal to them. When it comes to dealing with spam, you´re often on your own, especially if you´re an individual and not a large corporation.