Spam on the rise despite Can-Spam act.
Published Thu, Dec 7 2006 5:56 PM
Technorati Tags: Computers and Internet, News and Politics, Annoyances
From the Washington Times comes this article:
Viagra, gibberish, money-transfer requests, more Viagra.
Three years after the federal Can-Spam Act went into effect, unsolicited commercial e-mails are assaulting inboxes at record rates as spamming technology grows more sophisticated.
"I think the majority of the industry would say that spam levels are at the highest they've ever been," said Scott Chasin, chief technology officer at MX Logic Inc., a Colorado-based Internet security firm.
In September, unsolicited commercial e-mail messages accounted for more than 77 percent of all e-mail filtered by the company. Of that amount, only a fraction -- 0.27 percent -- was in compliance with federal anti-spamming law.
I wonder what the other 23 percent of messages being filtered are. If it's not spam, why is it being filtered? I'm curious about this, but I've yet to see a filter that works consistently, so I'm not surprised that the filter is trapping other things too.
I am surprised the the relatively tiny fraction of spam that's actually in compliance with the law though.
Under the Can-Spam Act, marketers are allowed to send unsolicited commercial e-mails as long as they include a truthful subject line and routing information; an opt-out mechanism; a notice that labels the e-mail as an advertisement; and a valid postal address.
"Legitimate businesses overwhelmingly comply with it," said Stephanie Hendricks, spokeswoman for the Direct Marketing Association. "Obviously, folks are still seeing a lot of spam, but it's not coming from legitimate companies."
That's the problem, according to Mr. Chasin.
...
Mr. Davis [a lawyer with the Federal Trade Commission] said the FTC uses a variety of tracking techniques to trace e-mails forwarded by consumers and identified as spam. While it's hard enough to track the messages, he said, the problem is exacerbated when the spam's origin is traced overseas. In that case, federal courts can award penalties, but collecting the fines can prove a challenge unless the spammer has assets in the U.S. Enforcement of the laws often depends on the relationship between the U.S. and the country in which the spam originated.
The five biggest violators, according to British nonprofit Spamhaus, are the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
The article ends with a quote from Mr. Chasin:
Until then, "I'm afraid we're only going to see spam continue to rise," he said.
Another problem is that Can-Spam only deals with spam that's transmitted via e-mail. It's a shame that it doesn't include trackback spammers and comment spammers. That sort of spam is more irritating to me right now than e-mail spam.
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