Consumers believe if you do e-business, you can expect spam - and while they think it's a bit of a delusion to believe the e-commerce world can really police itself, they still prefer anti-spam legislation that is not content-restrictive. At least, that's what a survey on unsolicited commercial e-mail is saying.
Co-sponsored by ChooseYourMail.com (www.chooseyourmail.com), the Committee Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE), and the Forum for Responsible and Ethical Email (FREE), the Spam Recycling Center conducted a yearlong survey involving just over 1,400 e-mail users.
"(We) believe it is the obligation of online marketing industry and Internet companies on the whole to promote consumer friendly, pro-growth practices that encourage consumer trust, not fear," says ChooseYourMail president Ian Oxnard, in a statement he posted on ChooseYourMail.com.
"The people who participated in this study came to the SRC because they are concerned about spam and this survey is an illustration of what they would like their government officials to do about it," he continues. "It is my hope that these findings will aid the federal and state governments in their efforts to craft responsible laws that empower consumers to protect themselves from invasive marketing practices while promoting the long-term growth of e-commerce."
Of those surveyed, 71.6 percent believed it was "somewhat likely" an e-commerce site gave up their address, with only 9.6 percent saying it was "somewhat unlikely" and 11.4 percent saying "very unlikely." Other respondents thought their addresses were drawn from news groups or chat rooms, or from business or personal websites, but the results here showed an even split on whether it was somewhat or very unlikely - 50.9 percent for "somewhat," 50.2 percent for "very."
"The practical implications of this are clear," the survey report says. "e-mail users are equating the use of e-commerce websites with receiving spam."
Based on pending or passed anti-spam legislation at federal and state levels, the report continues, three proposals were offered for consideration by survey participants. The one getting the most support was a proposal to make spam a civil violation with no new government enforcement and letting Internet service providers sue spammers for trespass - which happens to be the current law in California, and a large part of a proposal now working through Congress.
Colorado's pending anti-spam legislation - allowing spam as a practice but imposing penalties for "misleading" practices - proved the least favorable proposal among respondents, the report says.
