Senate Bill 1618

I'm sure if you've been on the net for more than a few days you've seen the following message (or a variant) in an email:

================ Removal Information =========================
This message is sent in compliance of the new email bill section 301. Per
Section  301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618, further transmissions to you
by the sender of  this email will be stopped at no cost to you. This message
is not intended for  residents in the State of WA, NV, CA & VA. Screening of
addresses has been done to  the best of our technical ability. If you are a
Washington, Virginia,or California  resident please remove yourself. We
respect all removal requests. To Be Removed:
mailto:shealth10@consultant.com.com?subject=remove. If you DID NOT "opt-in",
meaning -at some time- signed up to receive  health and/or sexual health
related information, please send removal request. In any case, this is a
one-time  offer, so you will not hear from us again.
=================================================================

This sure looks official, doesn't it? It looks like the email is legal, ethical and even desirable. After all, according to the instructions you can just remove yourself at any time.

Here are some of the problems with this clause:

Why would any valid email contain this clause? I mean, if you send an email to your friend do you say something like this? I know that when I send emails out to my mailing list I just let everyone know they can remove themselves at any time. There is no need to quote any laws since people who receive my emails asked to receive them.
The quoted law was passed by the Senate but not the House, and thus never never became law.
Even if the law was passed, most of these emails do not measure up.

Here is the wording of the proposed law (which did not pass and so is NOT law).

SEC. 301. REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO TRANSMISSIONS OF UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL.

(a) INFORMATION TO BE INCLUDED IN TRANSMISSIONS-

(1) IN GENERAL- A person who transmits an unsolicited commercial electronic mail message shall cause to appear in each such electronic mail message the information specified in paragraph (2).
(2) COVERED INFORMATION- The following information shall appear at the beginning of the body of an unsolicited commercial electronic mail message under paragraph (1):

(A) The name, physical address, electronic mail address, and telephone number of the person who initiates transmission of the message.
(B) The name, physical address, electronic mail address, and telephone number of the person who created the content of the message, if different from the information under subparagraph (A).
(C) A statement that further transmissions of unsolicited commercial electronic mail to the recipient by the person who initiates transmission of the message may be stopped at no cost to the recipient by sending a reply to the originating electronic mail address with the word `remove' in the subject line.

If this law had been passed, most emails with the notice would be illegal anyway, since they do not comply. Most of the email addresses included for removal do not work (which is a requirement) and, in fact, even bounce. Worse yet, spammers use these replies to determine whether or not an email address is valid. You reply and they know someone is at the other end of their email. Thus, the value of your email address goes up a tremendous amount (The rule is simple: never, ever reply to remove yourself from a spammer email).

On top of that, the phone numbers and addresses also required are often invalid.

The bottom line, this is a myth used by scum spammers to make their emails appear to be valid. They want it to look like it is okay for them to send their emails. And if you happen to reply to get removed, why then you will find yourself on more and more spam lists.

I've seem some variants on the text which are even stronger.

Under these provisions this letter can not be dealt with as spam and no further action can be taken by the reader against this company/person. Any report of this letter as spam to any independent agency or site is a violation of U.S. Bill S.1618 TITLE III of the U.S. Congress and will be dealt with promptly.

Now that seems pretty serious. I bet it detracts a few people from attempting to report the spammer. That's too bad, because the statement is totally and completely false. Not only is this false, but you cannot be "dealt with" for reporting spam - indeed, the spammer is the person who will be dealt with.

There is actually a good side to this story. Since a lot of spam includes a reference to this law, you can simply set up a spam filter to delete any emails containing the text "section 301" or some other part of the text.