Can Spam Act of 2003

The U.S. House of Representatives approved Congress' final version of the Can Spam Act of 2003, sending the landmark anti-spam legislation to the White House for President Bush's promised signature.

"With this bill, Congress is saying that if you are a spammer, you can wind up in the slammer. That is the bottom line. The bottom line is that there will be criminal penalties and real prosecution," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D.-N.Y. "Will we go after every spammer, somebody who makes a mistake here and there? No. But the studies show us -- this is what gives all of us such hope -- that maybe 250 spammers send out 90 percent of the e-mail. And we are saying to those 250, no matter where you are, or how you try to hide your spam, we will find you. This bill gives the FTC and the Justice Department the tools to go after you."

However for the FTC and Justice to know who to go after you must help them by sending a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to uce@ftc.gov.

Note: If you are using an email client which mangles headers (such as Microsoft Outlook) you'll need to use a program like SpamSource to collect the informaiton in the header and properly foward it.

Will the Can Spam Act really work? No one knows for sure yet, but it certiantly can't hurt. I figure I'm getting over 300 spam messages for each and every single legitimate email.