http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61928,00.html By Joanna Glasner Jan. 16, 2004 A federal law intended to curb the scourge of junk e-mail appears to have had little effect so far in discouraging spammers from deluging inboxes. In the two weeks since the Can-Spam Act, a U.S. law barring unscrupulous bulk e-mailing practices, took effect this year, providers of spam-filtering software say they're blocking more messages than ever. Spammers, they say, are either ignoring the law or pretending to comply with guidelines for legitimate e-mail marketing. "We certainly haven't seen any drop in the volume of spam," said Karl Jacob, chief executive of Cloudmark, a developer of tools for blocking junk e-mail. "It's still the same lock-step day-over-day, minute-over-minute increase." If anything, Jacob said, spammers are getting smarter. In an attempt to outfox filters, they've created programs that rapidly morph the content of messages, so that only three or four identical e-mails are sent out at a time. With the advent of Can-Spam, Jacob said spammers are also increasingly guilty of "faux compliance," exploiting a caveat in the law that permits unsolicited e-mails from legitimate marketers who allow recipients to opt out of future mailings. Unscrupulous junk mailers are pretending to go along with the guidelines by including false return addresses for opting out. Cloudmark, which provides spam blocking primarily to businesses and government agencies, estimates that 45 percent to 50 percent of messages it handled this month were spam, about on par with December. At Brightmail, which filters spam from close to 300 million e-mail inboxes for Internet service providers and businesses, the portion of junk messages was somewhat higher. The company estimated that 61 percent of all e-mails it filtered in the first week of January qualified as spam. In December, prior to Can-Spam's enactment, about 58 percent of the 80 billion messages were deemed spam. "We're not expecting a significant drop in spam overall this year," said Francois Lavaste, Brightmail's vice president of marketing. He noted that earlier efforts, including antispam legislation passed in Europe and a law targeting mobile-phone spammers in Japan, also have yet to put a discernible dent in junk-message volumes. Ed English, CEO of Intermute, maker of a blocking application called SpamSubtract, said he's filtering out a record level of junk mail from his home and office inboxes. While it's too early to tell whether Can-Spam can succeed in deterring the most unscrupulous of spammers, English expects no immediate slowdown in demand for filtering tools. "It's good that the government is doing something about it, but there's a fair amount of loopholes and wiggle room that still allow spammers to operate," he said, adding that many spammers will likely evade the law by moving offshore. John Mozena, spokesman for the Coaliton Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, doesn't expect the antispam law to have much impact until someone gets arrested. Bu once the Federal Trade Commission, the agency charged with enforcing the Can-Spam Act, makes an example of someone, Mozena thinks other spammers may get spooked enough to quit. A key scare tactic is the stiff sentencing guideline the Can-Spam act lays out for hard-core spammers. Under the law, first-time offenders can face fines and prison sentences of up to three years. Serial spammers could face imprisonment for up to five years. But Mozena remains skeptical that the FTC will have the resources to crack down on spam in a meaningful way. At the moment, he said, the agency has not publicized how consumers can report unlawful spammers. Mozena and other antispam activists, including the London-based Spamhaus, are also concerned that the Can-Spam Act will lead to an increase in unsolicited mail from otherwise reputable companies. Prior to the law's enactment, Spamhaus warned that the statute would permit all U.S. businesses to begin spamming American e-mail addresses as long as they give users a way to opt out. If this happened, the group predicted, "opting out of spammers' lists will very likely become the main daytime activity for most U.S. e-mail users in 2004." Even if Can-Spam is effective, Mozena predicted, the law's main impact will be to change the content, not the quantity, of unwanted e-mail messages. "The pornographers, the herbal Viagra merchants, the relatives of dead Nigerian dictators -- it may get rid of them," he said. "But the legitimate marketers now have a federally mandated stamp of approval. They can send each of us as much e-mail as they want until they're asked to stop." - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomo@private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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