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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: National Do Not Call Registry has opened
This came in from CBS Market Watch: YAHOO BLOCKS FTC DO-NOT-CALL MAIL SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Isn't it ironic. In the war against unsolicited e-mail, automated Spam blockers are actually getting in the way as they block legitimate mail from the government. The federal government on Friday began accepting consumers' requests to be put on its "Do-Not-Call" registry, a nationwide listing of people who don't want to be solicited at home via calls or e-mails. The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for administering the program. A person who wants to be included on the list will receive an e-mail from the government, then must send back an e-mail reply as confirmation. But a problem's arisen, as at least one major processor of e-mail -- Yahoo -- is blocking the confirmation e-mail, according to NetFrameworks, a tiny 25-person security company. NetFrameworks monitors Spam control mechanisms from the largest mail carriers, like Yahoo (YHOO), America Online and Microsoft (MSFT). "The irony of it is that the confirmation e-mail is being blocked by Yahoo, and therefore you will not receive the confirmation mail," said Eric Greenberg, chief technology officer of NetFrameworks and a former product manager for security at Netscape, now part of the AOL Time Warner (AOL) empire. "It's very difficult to make the technology work... Spam blockers are automated and the software rules are arbitrary," he said. A decade in the making, the federal do-not-call rule officially takes effect on Oct. 1. Companies that call phone users who are in the registry will be liable for steep fines -- as much as $11,000 per call. As of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, 250,000 phone numbers had been registered, according to the FTC. _______________________________________________________________________
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