The Federal Trade Commission recently released their first assessment of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The 2-year-old effort has given legitimate email marketers a set of guidelines to live by, detailing what should not be done when sending commercial email, such as using false header information, using open relays for transmission of email, and using deceptive or false subject lines. While a study by email security firm MX Logic found that only 4 percent of all commercial emails sent in 2005 are compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act, the FTC cites that overall spam levels have decreased. Also, compliance is high among legitimate marketers, and the amount of sexually explicit spam has dropped significantly.

Read more about FTC's first assessment of the CAN-SPAM Act at http://www.adotas.com/2006/02/email-marketing-in-the-can-spam-compliant-era/.