Assemblyman’s bill aims to make email safer
A state lawmaker wants to put an end to anonymous email addresses in New York state.
Assemblyman Clyde Vanel, D-Queens Village, recently introduced A.8581. The proposed legislation would require email service providers to have a procedure to authenticate an individual’s identity when creating an email address.
“The difficulty in determining the real-life identity of an e-mail account holder, in many cases, is next to impossible,” Vanel wrote in his legislative justification. “Therefore, it is necessary that we disallow bad actors to have free reign to create a new, anonymous online identity at a moment’s notice to evade the consequences of their criminal actions. The freedoms of the internet are important. It is indisputable that anonymity is a good thing when it comes to conducting legitimate, legal online activity. However, a line is crossed when this freedom to engage in malicious, anonymous activity online empowers a person to cause immeasurable damage to another in the physical world.”
Email authentication is used as a way to verify that an email is from a person or their business. Many email programs and Internet Service Providers are taking stronger measures to protect users from spam and phishing emails that have resulted in email addresses that aren’t authenticated ending up in a user’s spam or junk mail.
Vanel isn’t content to leave authentication of email addresses up to email companies, however. He says requiring email users to be verified will make it easier for police to catch those who commit crimes and make opening emails safer.
“The requirement that authentication be conducted to create an e-mail account is necessary to prevent internet crime from harming people the physical world,” Vanel wrote. “With authentication, district attorney’s will be empowered to find and arrest cyber criminals, giving all internet users peace of mind in knowing that if they are defrauded, there is a good chance that the perpetrator of the fraud will be apprehended.”