The Major Points on Spam

With the rise of spam the CAN-SPAM was enacted in January, 2004. The act covers any email which have as its purpose advertising or promotional efforts for any service or product, including those whose contents reside solely on a web site.
One legal initiative aimed at fighting spam is the "Digital PhishNet" (DPN), which was established in 2004. It is a collaborative effort between the Internet industry and criminal law enforcement. Its purpose is to identify and to prosecute spammers who break the law through phishing. Online auction sites, financial institutions, ISPs and other groups within the industry are all involved in this imitative. Important data and information is forwarded in real time to law enforcement.
Major provision of the law - It bans misleading subject lines. The subject line must not mislead the recipient to open the email under false pretenses. It should clearly indicate the actual subject matter of the email.
Protect yourself from the spam in your inbox
Friend or Foe? Just because an email has been sent to you by a friend, do not assume that it safe for you to open any attachment that comes with it. Contact your friend and verify that they did indeed send it. Very often, spammers will attach a virus to their spam, which, if opened, will hijack your email program and mail itself out to every email address in your address book. This fraudulent email will appear to the recipients to have been sent by you. If they in turn, open this email attachment, the same malicious cycle is repeated.
Never Respond. Do not click on any banner advertising or send a reply to a spam message. Doing this lets the spammer that yours is a "real, live" address, which will only result in a deluge of even more spam. Unless you have specifically subscribed, do not click on any unsubscribe messages contained in junk mail. Most of these are only intended to fool you into confirming your address as valid. Also, do not forward any junk chain letters you may receive.
How to Report Spam Abuse
Each type of spam will violate the law in one way or another and each can be prosecuted if it can be proven.
You should also forward the spam to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). You can do this at the website: uce@ftc.gov. While the FTC will not take action on individual incidents, they will add the spam to a database reffered to as UCE (unsolicited commercial email)
Report to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/ - This site offers you information about the law enforcement actions that have been taken against deceptive mailers and companies and those who do not honor opt-out requests from email recipients.