The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is a US law that requires commercial email senders to provide an unsubscribe option, prohibits wireless spam, and criminalizes email harvesting. It replaced state laws and is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. Some criticize it as too lenient, but several spammers have been convicted under its criminal provisions.
The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 is a US law aimed at reducing unwanted advertising and pornography in email. The law does not prohibit the sending of unsolicited commercial email (spam), but it does require that senders of commercial email include a way to unsubscribe or opt out. Other provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 prohibit wireless spam, require sexually explicit messages to include special labeling, and provide criminal penalties for email harvesting. While the effectiveness of the law has been questioned, several people have been convicted in court and given prison terms under the act’s criminal provisions.
By 2003, several US states had passed anti-spam legislation, and the federal government was under pressure to create national standards for handling unsolicited commercial email, more commonly known as spam. The US Congress responded by passing the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 16, 2003. The act replaced state laws and delegated most of the responsibility for treat spam to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The law requires that senders of commercial email, whether solicited or unsolicited, provide recipients with a way to unsubscribe from future messages. Unsubscribe requests must be fulfilled within 10 days and may not ask for any personal information other than an email address. Businesses are also required to list a physical or PO Box address, use a real return email address, and clearly identify the email as an advertisement in some way. Subject lines cannot be misleading or deceptive and pornographic emails must be identified with the words “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT”.
In addition to regulating commercial email, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 criminalizes some activities associated with spam. Using false information to register for multiple email addresses, sending spam through other computers to disguise its origin, and using someone else’s computer to send spam without permission became illegal when the act was entered into force. Spammers are also prohibited from harvesting email addresses or sending messages to randomly generated addresses in the hope that they exist.
Some have criticized the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act as too lenient and difficult to enforce. Anti-spam groups dubbed the law the “YOU-CAN-SPAM Act” because it didn’t ban the practice. Some politicians have criticized the law for omitting a way for people to sue spammers, a mechanism that was in many of the state laws that the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 replaced. Several high-profile spammers, however, have been convicted and sentenced to prison under the criminal provisions of the act. A California man was sentenced to 70 months in prison after using other users’ email accounts to send spam in an attempt to obtain credit card numbers.
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