A national "do not e-mail" registry would do little to prevent the proliferation of junk e-mail and could even make the spam problem worse, said the Federal Trade Commission in a report released Tuesday.

The FTC was required to produce the report for Congress under a provision of the federal Can-Spam Act, which went into effect in January. The "do not e-mail" registry would have functioned much like the national "do not call" registry, allowing consumers to protect themselves from unwanted marketing. However, technical oversights in the e-mail system would make such a registry impossible in practice, concluded the report.

By Amit Asaravala at Wired.

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