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Most Spam Truly Is A Scam, Finds New FTC Survey
May 12, 2003
In the first extensive review of the sources of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE), the Federal Trade Commission found [pdf format] that 44% of spam used a false return address which was meant to hide the sender's identity, and/or used a misleading subject line such as "re: lunch tomorrow" to trick the recipient into opening it. Altogether, 66% of the spam surveyed in all likelihood violated federal law through some sort of deceptive business practice, said Eileen Harrington, an Associate Director at the FTC.
Ads for investment and business opportunities contained the highest percentage of misleading information (90% in the FTC’s random sample of 1,000 pieces of e-mail). "Health" ads for weight-loss and sexual products, as well as travel and vacation promotions, were two other categories likely to contain untrue information (48% and 47% respectively). The FTC study also shed light on the particulars of sexually explicit spam: 17% of ads for pornographic Web sites contained sexually explicit images in the body of the message. Forty one percent of these explicit ads used false "From" or "Subject" lines. The samples measured were taken from three sources – the UCE Database (approximately 450 sample messages), the Harvest Database (approximately 450 sample messages), and spam received in official FTC inboxes (approximately 100 sample messages).
"Spam is a big fraud problem and one that needs an aggressive law-enforcement response," said Associate Director Harrington. The FTC noted that spammers are largely ignoring new state laws requiring spammers to include the phrase "ADV:" (for advertisement) in the subject line. The FTC staff found that only 2% of spam complied with these labeling rules. In any event, consumer advocates contend that the FTC’s current anti-spam proposals are inadequate since they do not allow individuals to sue for damages. "Government officials can take action," said Jason Catlett, President of Junkbusters, but "the only way to beat the spammers is to have large numbers of litigants against them." The FTC’s Associate Director Harrington said that the agency hoped to determine whether additional laws were needed following a three-day conference on spam. (see our companion story on the conference in this issue of ADLAW By Request.)
Why This Matters: Not coincidentally, the FTC spam report was released the day before the agency hosted a three-day conference bringing together the various spam and anti-spam constituencies and while Congress and states are considering anti-spam legislation. The report sends a message that spam’s legal problems include the fact that spam is often deceptive or fraudulent.
Most Spam Truly Is A Scam, Finds New FTC Survey
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