U.S. declines to create do-not-spam list

Tuesday, June 15th 2004, 11:22 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Bush administration will not immediately create a national do-not-spam registry to discourage unwanted e-mails, saying using current technology to do so might generate even more unsolicited sales pitches across the Internet, according to documents obtained Tuesday.

The Federal Trade Commission, expected to announce its decision later in the day, said it feared that unscrupulous senders of unwanted e-mails would mine such a registry of e-mail addresses looking for new victims, according to a summary of the FTC's decision obtained by The Associated Press.

The commission, which was obligated to consider the proposal under the ``can spam'' legislation that Bush signed in December, concluded that it would be ``largely powerless to identify those responsible for misusing the registry.''

Regulators instead proposed broad adoption of new authentication technology that will make it more difficult to disguise the origin of unwanted e-mails. Several proposals from leading technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., are under industry consideration.

``A national do-not-e-mail registry, without a system in place to authenticate the origin of e-mail messages, would fail to reduce the burden of spam and may even increase the amount of spam received by consumers,'' the commission said.

If new authentication plans fail to emerge, the FTC it will convene a federal advisory committee to determine whether the government could require Internet providers to adopt one.

``Without effective authentication of e-mail, any registry is doomed to fail,'' the commission said.

The government said it was particularly worried about issues of security and privacy with respect to children whose addresses might be added to such a registry.

``A registry that identified accounts used by children, for example, could assist legitimate marketers to avoid sending inappropriate messages to children,'' the commission said. ``At the same time, however, the Internet's most dangerous users, including pedophiles, also could use this information to target children.''