HELO RCPT TO QUIT MAIL FROM DATA - Federal Trade Commission

Executive Summary
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Executive Summary
The Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC” or “Commission”) submits this
Report pursuant to Section 11(2) of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited
Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (the “CAN-SPAM Act”), 15 U.S.C. §
7710(2) (2003), which requires the Commission to submit “a report that sets forth
a plan for requiring commercial electronic mail to be identifiable from its subject
line . . . or an explanation of any concerns the Commission has that cause the
Commission to recommend against the plan.”
A subject line labeling requirement would compel senders of unsolicited
commercial email (“UCE”) to include specific characters, such as “ADV,” in the
subject lines of their messages. The idea is that subject line labeling could make it
easier for Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) to identify and screen out unwanted
UCE, and for consumers to block or segregate UCE, or to tell at a glance whether
individual messages that reach their in-boxes are commercial. Thus, subject line
labeling may appear to offer a simple legislative fix, theoretically making it easy
to either completely block all unwanted commercial email or to segregate UCE
from other email messages.
The Commission, however, strongly doubts that such an outcome would
result. The Commission comes to this conclusion after examining the likely
benefits of an ADV labeling requirement applicable to all UCE, including email
messages sent by legitimate marketers. Experience with subject line labeling
requirements in the states and in other countries does not support the notion
that such requirements are an effective means of reducing spam through more
efficient sorting or filtering. Indeed, spam filters widely available at little or
no cost (through ISPs or commercial companies) more effectively empower
consumers to set individualized email preferences to reduce unwanted UCE from
both spammers and legitimate marketers. Mandatory subject line labeling, by
comparison, would be an imprecise tool for filtering and sorting that, at best,
might make it easier to segregate labeled UCE from unlabeled UCE. This is
because it is extremely unlikely that outlaw spammers would comply with a
requirement to label the email messages they send. By contrast, legitimate
marketers likely would comply with a subject line labeling requirement. As a
result, if ISPs were to filter based on the subject line label – or if consumers were
to set their personal email programs to direct labeled email messages to their junk