Going after Spammers...

With the new job, one of my primary functions is in locating spammers on our network and terminating their accounts. This is something I do with extreme prejudice and a little bit of joy in knowing the spammers' accounts are nuked.
As part of my job, I roam the net in search of any info I can find to help me out in this. In this search, I hear a lot of spammers saying they are CAN-SPAM compliant. You know what? They are not. CAN-SPAM requires commercial mass email to include the following:

1. NO forged headers. This includes the From: and Reply-To: headers.
2. A working, obvious, and easy Opt-out method.
3. The physical mailing address of the sender.
4. The Subject line may not be misleading, and if the content is of an adult nature, the Subject line must have an obvious way of stating such, like "ADV-ADULT" or something.
5. The addresses are NOT allowed to have been "harvested" or guessed. (This is a long winded way of saying you pretty much need to opt in or have some prior business relationship.)

This law applies to your email if it is commercial in nature and if it originates in, passes through, or is delivered to any computer in the USA. This means that even if you live in Romania, send mail from there through proxies in Argentina, and they advertize your web site in China, if these spams get to an American, you are responsible for complying. "So what?" you ask, "I'm not in the USA." Sure. But if you ever decide to visit, you can probably be prosecuted the moment you set foot on US territory.

It you are really running a legitimate business, I don't see how it would be that hard to comply with CAN-SPAM.

Oh yeah... Here is an example of a company that says they are compliant but is not: http://www.strategicnetmedia.com/
They seem to have used harvested addresses and also do not include a physical address. Additionally, it is the mailer's responsibility to maintain the working opt-out method. Violating the terms of service for a company that hosts something vital to your opt out method and then having them find out and terminate that account is not a responsible way to maintain this opt-out mechanism. Besides, even if the spam was CAN-SPAM compliant, spamming is against the terms of service for most internet companies and you WILL lose your access. Were you legal? Perhaps. But you need to follow more than just local laws here in cyberspace.....

You need to play nice with others.