Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, I congratulate you in your efforts to curb the problem of unsolicited bulk email or spam. I regularly receive emails about viagra but every time it is from a new address - I use a program called Mailwasher Pro which lets me blacklist addresses. It seems to me it is very difficult to prosecute such people. Some of them I try and blacklist and it says the from address is my address so they must have spoofed that somehow. I think you ought to differentiate between Tell A Friend and chain mails which are used to harvest email addresses. I see no problem with somebody liking a newsletter say and recommending it to a friend. What I do hate is chain mails that fool lots of people - sometimes even pretending that by passing the mail on you are helping some charity/good cause when in fact all it is doing is gathering email addresses. Another thing to be aware of is people using tiny pictures within their mail which relay back to the sender whether or not that email was received - Mailwasher Pro will not show any images but will show you where they are in the mail when you preview. I am an Internet marketer and affiliate marketer and am concerned about the proposed requirement for merchants to maintain suppression lists. There are so many problems and costs associated with this idea that I foresee, and so much damage done to consumers and businesses alike, that I feel I must urge you to consider this matter most carefully. Requirement of the use of suppression lists will seriously damage many of the legitimate publications available on the net. My specific concern is for harm to publishers who require permission from the consumer prior to adding them to any list. If guidelines could be included to do this simply e.g. with a checkbox then maybe it would be ok. They're not who CAN-SPAM was designed to put out of business, but this requirement will very likely have that effect. There's also the potential for consumers, who most likely will not fully understand the implicatoins when they unsubscribe from a list. It is difficult to work out intent - they might not have the time, they might not like the mailing or a whole array of possible reasons. On top of that, these suppression lists could easily fall into the hands of spammers, leading to more spam instead of less. I was quite surprised at the potential problems this ruling could involve, and urge you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider its implementation in light of these problems, Respectfully, Paul Cowen Herts, UK