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DON'T SPEW A Set of Guidelines for Mass Unsolicited Mailings and Postings (spam*)

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Network Working Group                                    S. Hambridge
Request for Comments: 2635                                      INTEL
FYI: 35                                                      A. Lunde
Category: Informational                       Northwestern University
                                                            June 1999


                               DON'T SPEW
                A Set of Guidelines for Mass Unsolicited
                     Mailings and Postings (spam*)

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document explains why mass unsolicited electronic mail messages
   are harmful in the Internetworking community.  It gives a set of
   guidelines for dealing with unsolicited mail for users, for system
   administrators, news administrators, and mailing list managers.  It
   also makes suggestions Internet Service Providers might follow.

1.  Introduction

   The Internet's origins in the Research and Education communities
   played an important role in the foundation and formation of Internet
   culture.  This culture defined rules for network etiquette
   (netiquette) and communication based on the Internet's being
   relatively off-limits to commercial enterprise.

   This all changed when U.S. Government was no longer the primary
   funding body for the U.S. Internet, when the Internet truly went
   global, and when all commercial enterprises were allowed to join what
   had been strictly research networks.  Internet culture had become
   deeply embedded in the protocols the network used.  Although the
   social context has changed, the technical limits of the Internet
   protocols still require a person to enforce certain limits on
   resource usage for the 'Net to function effectively.  Strong
   authentication was not built into the News and Mail protocols.  The
   only thing that is saving the Internet from congestion collapse is
   the voluntary inclusion of TCP backoff in almost all of the TCP/IP



Hambridge & Lunde            Informational
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