US Postal Service accused of spamming

Customer email campaign in breach of CAN-SPAM regulations.

The US Postal Service (USPS) has come under fire from anti-spam activists after a mass email campaign promoting a new web-based post and shipping service was judged to contravene the US CAN-SPAM laws.

The emails, promoting a new feature of the USPS 'Click-n-Ship' service, was sent to non-business addresses, and did not include a postal address or opt-out facility, according to email and anti-spam expert John Levine's anti-spam blog. As a US government organisation, the USPS is not generally thought to be bound by the terms of the CAN-SPAM act.

'CAN-SPAM is often seen as more of a spammers' charter than an anti-spam law,' said John Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. 'If even government institutions, and as we've seen in the past political parties and election candidates, are not going to abide by the regulations, there's little hope that the crooks pumping out spam around the world are going to pay much attention.'

15 December 2006

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