MS Speaks Out Against New Zealand's Anti Spam Bill

out_sp0k1n writes "Ryan Hamlin, head of Microsoft's Technology Care and Safety Group spoke out against New Zealand's proposed anti-spam legislation, warning that it could impinge on 'the amazing vehicle of e-mail marketing'. He also suggests that CAN-SPAM has been effective in deterring spammers. From The Article: 'Though often criticized as too meek, US anti-spam legislation - which relies on people opting out of spam - has proved effective in supporting prosecutions and deterring spammers.' Anyone else think that one message doesn't count as spam?"

Comments

Re:Microsoft serious about squashing SPAM?

[Moraelin]

It's especially that part about allowing them to send notifications for "new" stuff, regardless of whether you opted out before or not, that's especially worrying me. It's a free license to spam.

Think about it. It doesn't say new _categories_, so it doesn't even have to mean they'd have drop penis enlargement pills once you've opted out. They can make you opt out of _one_ _product_ at a time, then rename it or call it a new version, and spam you some more.

E.g., spam advertising porn, could spam you with a different combination of web site and category in each batch of mails, and opting out of one wouldn't prevent them from sending the next batch. They could just make a bogus "hosted site" for each batch, which just redirects to the main one, but hey, it's for a "new" service (site) you haven't yet opted out of. So they're allowed.

In fact, it makes it worse than no opt-out at all. To actually unsubscribe from all that, you'd have to actually open the message and look for the unsubscribe link for that product, then email the spammer. From a spammer's perspective it's actually better: they made you open and read his spam instead of just looking at the message and deleting it.

So seeing MS back such a license to spam with impunity, makes me really worry.