An article posted on The Chief Officers’ Network today posed an interesting question: Are Anti-spam Laws Working?

The obvious conclusion, was no. These laws requiring that “spammers” provide opt-out options at the bottom of their email attacks seem to act more as a means to validate an email address, rather than protect it.  While all reputable companies abide by these opt-out requirements - for the more shadowy figures in the situation, at best these opt-outs are ignored.

The article called out some of the more devious perpetrators in the equation: a company called fagms.net that requires users to opt-out to campaigns individually rather than as a whole, a US company whose media contact list seems to be harvested by bots at best and endlessly peppers the unlucky recipients with email blurbs from clients, and a company called easy.com that simply ignores customer’s opt-out requests.

But what was never mentioned was the nature of these email messages: the faux products and services they were trying to hawk, the links they begged you to click on, the software you just have to download.

And their very questionable legitimacy.  At the heart of the problem is a set of “businesses” that are not seeking to do any sort of legitimate “business.”  These people are criminals, not just dodgy businessman, and it is no surprise they tip toe around the laws in place that are meant to circumvent them.  

If laws were enough our society would be utopian.

However, there are laws in place to prevent people from stealing, but people still steal.

There are laws in place to prevent people from speeding, but people still speed.

There are laws in place to prevent people from downloading music illegally, but music is still downloaded illegally.

…and the list goes on.  Spammers are criminals that do not abide by the law.  Plain and simple.

We could fill the books with laws that sought to prevent these messages, but those annoying solicitations would still creep into our inboxes.

The solution is much easier than we all seem to think it is.  It isn’t legislation, its technology.  Implement email protection solutions that adopt an approach to email that gives the end-user control over who they communicate with, not the spammer. Access to someone’s email inbox is a privilege, not a right, and should be treated as such – take advantage of technology that makes this a reality.