April 14, 1997 Secretary Enclosed please find our comments for Consumer Privacy 1997, and our request to participate in those workshop sessions. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at your convenience. Sincerely, Paul E. Hoffman, Director Consumer Privacy 1997 -- Comment, P954807 Question 2.16: Privacy concerns It is well known that the number of unsolicited commercial email (UCE) messages has greatly increased in the past year. To a great extent, this is due to the easier availability of lists of target addresses that are being sold by a variety of mailing list merchants. Not only has the number of messages increased, but so has the number of recipients of each message. There are many privacy issues implicated by the increasing practice of widespread mailing of UCE. The privacy aspects of UCE have only recently been addressed. The methods that mailing list vendors use to collect email addresses vary, but they almost always involve the automatic collection of names and addresses from mailing lists and from postings on the Usenet news system. Early programs only collected raw mailing addresses, which posed little problems for privacy. However, modern collection programs can also collect data about the user at the same time that the email address is collected. These programs can collect personal data such as:
and so on. Some commercially-available mailing lists are already selected and sorted on this kind of information. Consumer Privacy 1997 -- Comment, P954807 Question 2.18: Costs to consumers Unsolicited commercial email (UCE) costs many consumers money, lost time, and other lost communications. These costs are particularly harmful to low-income and physically disabled users, as well as to users who depend upon Internet mail for their communications. Although some Internet users in the U.S. get their Internet access for free or for a fixed amount per month, many other users must pay a per-minute telephone charge. For these users, UCE acts like postage-due letters that they are forced to accept and pay for. Millions of Americans have disabilities that make sitting, particularly in front of a computer, very tiring and painful. However, many of these people are also required to use the Internet in their jobs, education, and rehabilitation training. The constant deluge of UCE forces them to spend time using their computers to read commercials they are not interested in, thereby reducing the amount of time they can do real work with their computers. The costs to consumers of UCE go beyond the direct, out-of-pocket costs normally thought of. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must purchase and maintain computer systems to accept mail for all of their customers. Because there is no way to determine which incoming messages are UCE, ISPs are forced to accept and deliver UCE in the same way they do regular email. UCE puts an unwanted burden on the resources of the ISPs, which in turn forces them to charge consumers more for their services. For heavy users of Internet mail, the volume of UCE overloads their processing of incoming messages, making it extremely difficult to separate wheat from chaff. Today's senders of UCE have become more devious, making the ability to review a message's Subject field ineffective in separating UCE from other, useful mail. Consumer Privacy 1997 -- Comment, P954807 Question 2.19: Technical developments Because of the onerous nature of unsolicited commercial email (UCE), many companies are working on ways to prevent UCE from getting to users. However, none of the methods tried so far have worked very well. Most methods for preventing reception of UCE consist of "filtering" mail by looking at the content. Although these have been somewhat effective for some UCE, these filters are easy for UCE senders to circumvent. In fact, Internet mail experts have already formulated methods that UCE senders might use that would render most of today's filters useless. Further, few Internet users can use today's UCE filters. It is often impossible to add these filters to typical Internet mail reading programs, and few users have the technical skills needed to use the programs that the filters work with. Some users trust their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to filter their mail for them, but doing so has great risks, including loss of mail that the user might have actually wanted. The problems with current approaches to filtering are excessive complexity and inadequate accuracy. Users must know how to create the proper filters, yet this can be quite difficult. Worse, the fact that no rules are enforced in mail labeling means that the filters are only heuristics or guesses about the ways to distinguish UCE from other mail. Consumer Privacy 1997 -- Request to Participate, P954807 The Internet Mail Consortium (IMC) is the primary industry trade group for suppliers of Internet mail software and services. Its members consist of:
IMC is recognized for its leadership in both technical advancement of Internet mail and advocacy for wider deployment of Internet mail. It has held workshops in the areas of security and interoperability, and conducted many technical initiatives whose result is better ease of use for end users of Internet mail. IMC can help the Federal Trade Commission in its deliberations about email-related issues by bringing together leaders from all areas of the Internet mail community. We can also assist by giving in-depth technical advice about Internet mail, where needed. Complete information about the IMC can be found at <http://www.imc.org/>. |