Small Business or Not, Do You Know The Rules?

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Starting a business is more then just buying a cheap domain, putting up your site and saying “Hey, Buy From Me!”.

The Federal Trade Commission is the primary federal agency that regulates e-commerce activities including commericial email, online advertising and consumer privacy.

They offer a few select resources including e-commerce,  marketing, starting a business and internet tools and several tech tools.

I personally found the obstacle of SPAM sticky when I started my newsletter. You don’t want to let those customers slip away, but you don’t want to break the rules either. 

The following is an article on SPAM.

Taking a Bite out of Spam; Unsolicited email an obstacle to  business

Billions of e-mails offering the skinny on get rich quick schemes, Viagra prescriptions, and pornography infiltrate people’s inboxes every day. Spam costs billions each year in time and resources and threatens to undermine the convenience and security offered by e-commerce.

“The proliferation of bulk, unsolicited commercial e-mail has become more than a nuisance,” said Joe Rubin, the U.S. Chamber’s executive director for technology and e-commerce during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in July. “Increasingly, consumers are getting bombarded with pornographic and misleading e-mail that overshadows the online communication efforts of legitimate companies.”

Spam adversely affects both consumers and businesses. Consumers may be less likely to buy goods online if they think that including their e-mail addresses will lead to a storm of unwanted commercial e-mail. Further, they often delete bulk e-mail from their inboxes indiscriminately, unable to differentiate between spam and e-mail from legitimate companies. Businesses that communicate with their customers via e-mail risk being mistaken as spammers and then being hit with legal action. They also endure productivity losses when spam contains dangerous viruses that corrupt computer systems. And who can forget all the time it takes to download and delete unwanted messages?

To help address the growing spam epidemic, the Chamber supports the Reduction in Distribution Spam Act of 2003. Not only would the act empower Internet service providers to go after spammers, it would also create greater cooperation between business and government, strengthen the Federal Trade Commission’s enforcement abilities, and create a single, uniform code for e-mail communicators. Such legislation, which is currently awaiting a vote in the House of Representatives, would decrease the harmful impact of spam without stifling the ability of companies to reach their customers, both current and potential.

Source: US Chamber of Commerce

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