Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 Attention To the FTC Commissioners, We are delighted that you are working to decrease and limit SPAM - the big nuisance of unsolicited bulk email. Many on-line marketers and entrepreneurs who run legitimate and honest businesses send “permission only” emails, also known as “opt-in” emails to their subscriber lists. We are most concerned about proposed requirement for such merchants to maintain “Suppression Lists” in any form. Maintaining a Suppression List is a breach of privacy and confidentiality. If a person asks to be removed from an “opt-in” list, their name is immediately removed and NO FURTHER record of their details is kept. (unless of course they choose to provide their details again at a later date) It is impossible for the original merchant or supplier of genuine business emails to control or access every buyer’s lists and business activities (including lists belonging to an Internet Marketing “Affiliate” who operates their own on-line business activity) without invading their privacy as well as creating excessive expense that most small, medium, and home based business cannot afford. Legal ramification of legislation will be impossible to deal with effectively by legitimate business owners, and the control of illegal SPAM will not happen. There are so many potential problems and excessive costs associated with this proposal, and so much damage will be done to both consumers and legitimate honest businesses alike, that we urge you to consider this proposal very carefully. Any requirement to use Suppression Lists will seriously damage many of the legitimate publications available on the Internet. Our specific concern is for harm to publishers who require permission from the consumer prior to adding them to any list. The consumers should be given options to be on a genuine mailing list, but it is improper and a reach of privacy to even consider having their details kept in any form on another list… a Suppression List, simply because they have chosen to opt out of the list they originally chose to be on. CAN-SPAM legislation was designed to put nuisance pranksters, fraudulent advertisers, and non-legitimate operations out of business. The suggested requirements for maintaining lists of private contact details of people who no may longer wish to deal with us or have communication from us, both invades their privacy and places unnecessary and unaffordable burdens on owners of online businesses. Our country in many ways encourages entrepreneurship and small and Home-based businesses. The requirement to maintain Suppression Lists is against the spirit of ethical business practice, and this requirement will very likely have the effect of destroying many legitimate small and home based businesses worldwide, who use email as an honest and legitimate way of communicating with their clients and interested potential customers who choose to receive email information from those businesses. The potential exists for significant harm to consumers, because of the problem of properly knowing their intent when they Unsubscribe from a list. Also, these Suppression Lists will be highly sought after by Spammers, and easily easily fall into their hands, in a similar way that email address harvesting exists right now. This will leading to more spam instead of less. We are disturbed and 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. It is MOST IMPORTANT that every person who chooses to unsubscribe from a list have their details deleted forever, not maintained on a Suppression list that is likely to fall into the hands of unscrupulous spammers. Respectfully, Geof and Lynne Frauenfelder Queensland, Australia