OK, so what're these email laws?

They're Child Protection Registry laws that have been taken into effect in State of Michigan and Utah.

These laws established "Do Not Email" registries into which individuals or institutions that primarily serve minors can enter minors' email addresses or any email address to which minors may have access. Institutions or entities that primarily serve minors can also register their entire domain names.

People are prohibited by these laws from sending email to addresses that have been in registries for 30 days or more if email contains material or link to material that is illegal for minors. And it doesn't matter whether email is solicited or unsolicited, you still can't send such email.

You might think that materials must be something obvious such as pornography, gambling, alcohol, etc. Yes, but they're only part of materials.

The other part consists of less obvious stuff, namely stuff that looks fine, but might be illegal for minors because minors are prohibited by law from viewing, receiving, participating, possessing, or purchasing this stuff. This includes automotive sales, financial services such as credit card, etc.

And according to Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy, these laws apply to almost all people in United States and even those outside United States who have a physical presence in United States. (see http://www.isipp.com/child-protection-email-address-registries.php)

When you set up an email client like outlook express for accessing POP3 mailboxes, Yahoo email, Msn Hotmail or any other service provider you will be confronted with a screen asking for display name, email address,reply address.

The important fields are :

Display Name: This is usually your name or nickname and will appear on your email in from address. In Example above steve

Email Address: This is email address given to you by your email provider. In example above steve@....... (left bank here because of email harvesting). The email address is usually associated with a physical mailbox.

Reply address: This is email address That recipient will reply to and is either blank or set to same address as Email address-The effect is same. In example above it is set to be same as Email address.

Reply Address Different From Email

Normally you set up email and reply address to be same. There is however a case for setting them to be different and that is normally when you have changed email providers but have retained your old email address. In order to retain your email address you need to own domain name and this is covered in more detail in a guide to email addresses and lifetime email addresses. Assuming for now that your addresses are as follows:

old: steve@oldISP.com

new: steve@newISp.com

lifetime email address: steve@mydomain.com

You would set up your email client (outlook express , IncrediMail) as follows:

Set up for old ISP

DISplay Name: steve

Email Address: steve@oldISp.com