Utah Anti-Kids-Spam Registry "a Flop"

Eric Goldman writes "A couple of years ago Utah enacted a 'Child Protection Registry.' The idea was to allow parents to register kids' email addresses and then to require certain email senders to filter their lists against that database before sending their emails. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the Utah registry has been a 'financial flop.' Initially projected to generate $3-6 million in revenues for Utah, it has instead produced total revenues of less than $200,000. 80% of this has gone to Unspam, the for-profit registry operator; Utah's share of the registry's revenues has been a paltry $37,445. Worse, Utah has spent $100,000 (so far) to defend the private company from legal challenges by free-speech, advertising, and porn interests."

Comments

Perfect way to generate valid email

[swchurchill]

Step 1: spammer submits list of emails to be "scrubbed" Step 2: All emails on the list (which are valid emails, one assumes) are removed. Step 3: Spammer receives "scrubbed" list back Step 4: Spammer checks against the original list to see what email addresses are gone. In other words, this would have the EXACT opposite effect - this is a way for spammers to GENERATE lists of valid email addresses for minors.