“Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.”
- Bill Gates on spam

Every so often it is prudent to take a refresher on fundamental email marketing topics and best practices. CAN-SPAM, officially known as the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003, is one of the most important online marketing topics. To follow are some of the basic facts, principals and rules concerning CAN-SPAM legislation. But like most legislation, this is not a simple bill. I recommend reading the entire act to learn more details.

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The Federal Trade Commission scored a major victory yesterday in shutting down HerbalKing, one of the most prolific spam groups on the Internet.

This is obviously a big boost for legitimate email marketers around the world. No one likes receiving spam, yet it constitutes an estimated 90% of all sent email. Many spam operations have been prosecuted by the FTC in the past, but HerbalKing is “perhaps the most extensive they had ever encountered, with ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States.”

To give you an idea of just how big HerbalKing’s operation was, consider this: they could send 10 billion e-mail messages a day. That means that HerbalKing sent more messages in a few days than legitimate, permission-based email marketers sent during all of last year.