What catalogers need to know about consumer privacy regulations.

By Reported Donna Loyle

Crammed with Spam

Telemarketing is not the only prospecting tactic to come under governmental scrutiny. E-mail marking also is lying prone on the examination table.

More and more consumers are groaning about unsolicited commercial e-mail — aka: spam. No doubt, you also have seen a marked increase in spam in your own e-mail inbox. Brightmail, a spam-filtering company, said that during this past February alone, 43 percent of all e-mails sent, or 227 billion messages, were junk. That’s up dramatically from 8 percent in January 2001.