WASHINGTON-A leading consumer group last week said Congress may need to strengthen the anti-spam law to better protect wireless subscribers against potentially costly unwanted commercial e-mail.
“Congress needs to take fine tuning this law seriously because spam may not only make wireless devices less useful, but e-mail in general, as people are trusting it less,” said James Guest, president of Consumers Union, in testimony for a Senate Commerce Committee hearing.
Guest said mobile-phone carriers may be contributing to the spam epidemic. “Wireless companies are aggressively trying to get consumers to opt in to business relationships with marketers, for example, by getting them to vote on the TV program `American Idol’ using five-digit short codes,” stated Guest. “Consumers should beware that simply by playing along with a TV show, they may unwittingly be signing up for loads of wireless spam.”
The hearing underscored the fact that last year’s CAN-SPAM Act-which outlawed wireless spam-has been ineffective is stemming the tide of unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that if the Federal Trade Commission cannot find the spammers, the agency should “go after the businesses that knowingly hire spammers to promote their goods and services.”
The FTC and Federal Communications Commission are reviewing comments on how to implement wireless provisions of the anti-spam law.
