Report to the Federal Trade Commision of the The Center for Democracy and Technology's ad-hoc Working Group on Unsolicited Commercial E-mail This document reflects the work of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Unsolicited Commercial Email. The recommendations offered reflect the Working Group's efforts to reach consensus on appropriate first steps to address the problems associated with unsolicited commercial email (UCE). Many of the participants have additional views on UCE that are not encompassed in this report. The recommendations do not necessarily represent the views of the organizations with which the participants are associated. We encourage you to contact the participants to learn more about the issue and their position; a list of organizations, companies and individuals who participated in meetings is provided at the end of the report. The Federal Trade Commission's June 1997 Workshop on Consumer Privacy marked the beginning of a focused discussion of the problems associated with unsolicited commercial email (UCE). The testimony and statistics presented to the FTC provided a basis from which to search for solutions to what most workshop participants, analysts, and email users have identified as a problem that is, at present, unlikely to be solved by market forces alone. Comments and presentations before the FTC detailed the independent and collective efforts, involving nearly every segment of the online population, to address the problems arising from unsolicited commercial email. [1] The half-day workshop on unsolicited commercial email documented the frustrations of email users - both individuals and businesses - with the growing clutter of unsolicited messages in their in-boxes. It documented the growing burden that unsolicited commercial messages place on Internet service providers. It raised important questions about the future of email - will it be a useful medium for a variety of communications or will it be overrun by an onslaught of unsolicited, and often fraudulent, commercial messages?
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