A murkogram is a type of spam email that falsely claims to be legal under non-existent laws. It is named after US Senator Frank Murkowski who proposed a section in a bill to regulate UCE. Murkograms reference laws that don’t exist to avoid complaints. They are now illegal under the CAN-SPAM Act.
A murkogram is a type of spam email that has some distinctive characteristics. Most spam can be labeled as unsolicited commercial email (UCE), as it attempts to sell you something without ever getting your permission to contact you in the first place. The murkogram, however, is unique in that it also tries to convince you that the UCE you receive is perfectly legal under the law.
The name murkogram is named after US Senator Frank Murkowski. In 1999, the US Senate was considering a bill called S. 1618. The bill was also called the Telephone Slamming Bill and primarily concerned the business of companies charging long-distance providers without the explicit customer permission. Senator Murkowski has decided to attach a section to S.1618 called the Title III or Inbox Privacy Act, which would require all UCE to include the company name, contact information such as a telephone number, physical and email address and instructions on how to remove your email address from receiving future emails.
The House of Representatives did not like the provision and removed it. Therefore there is no Title III section of S. 1618. The reason this little legal lesson is important is because of the phrasing in a murkogramma. Most murkograms will quote that they comply with Bill S.1618, Title III. Therefore, consumers cannot complain or do anything to receive UCE of this type.
Yet technically this is not true. There is no Title III section, so the murkogram employs a bogus law to prevent consumers from complaining about spam. There are a couple of other laws that are “dead” in the House or Senate that you might see mentioned in a murkogram. They include HR 3888, which in its initial version included language that would appear to protect against spamming. This language was removed and the bill never became law. Another frequently cited bill is HR 4176, which like 3888 was never signed into law.
What the murkogram attempts is to get you spam emails by referencing laws or regulations that don’t exist. They hope, by sounding “official,” that they won’t get any complaints from users. There are many companies that provide information of the type Senator Murkowski has suggested, and where unsubscribing from lists is quite easy, some companies tend to be very complicated in this regard.
Murkograms are now strictly illegal, thanks to the US federal law, the CAN-SPAM Act, signed into legislation in 2004. This is an “opt-out” system, where people can unsubscribe by sending an email to the creators of UCE. However, the law also defines deception contained in emails as criminal behavior.
This means that any murkogram you receive is illegal, making claims about laws that don’t exist, and implying that you have no means to prevent receiving such mail in the future. Most people respect Can-Spam and fewer murkograms are being sent currently. If you receive one, you may want to work with your email or internet provider to report this illegal behavior.
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