Time Tags

E-mails should specify the time they were sent in both local (sender’s time zone) and receiver’s time zone. The times should be stated in a simple enough format so that it can be read at a glance without giving much effort.

E-mail Charges

There should also be a 5 cent charge for every e-mail that is sent. This would prevent virtually all spam and ensure that the vast majority of advertising that is conducted via e-mail consist of ads targeted to researched recipients. These e-mail fees should be used to help maintain the general reliability and security of the Internet.

Advertising & Spam

E-mail advertisements should always have an ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the e-mail. E-mails should be prohibited from having unsubscribe links that appear as URL addresses, or links that say something like “click here” to unsubscribe, or “link”, unless they also have an easy to find link that says “Unsubscribe”.

Furthermore, the recipients of these e-mails should be allowed to remove themselves from a list by either just clicking on the ‘Unsubscribe’ link or by clicking on the ‘Unsubscribe’ link that would then take them to a page where they would be able to unsubscribe simply by clicking an easy-to-find ‘Unsubscribe’ button on that page. They should not be required to type in their e-mail address or even confirm it, nor should they be required to click on or check a box indicating that they want to unsubscribe. They should be required to do nothing else than to click on an ‘Unsubscribe’ button, and this button should be very easy to find and should be visually extremely distinct from a resubscribe button or other button that may not fulfill their desire to unsubscribe.

A request to be removed from an e-mail list should last forever, or should begin three months after the last remnant of a customer initiated contact with the advertiser.

Each Internet advertiser and other users of e-mail lists should be required to update their do-not-send lists every 7 days, at the longest. In addition, they should not be able to sell or give these lists (or any e-mail addresses included in them) to any other entity that may use them for unsolicited e-mailings until after such lists have been updated to reflect all changes made since the last update. In other words, only e-mail lists that have been purged through the latest of these weekly updates would be allowed to be sold or otherwise distributed.

‘Spoofing’ e-mail addresses or any other information should be illegal and heavily penalized.