The Tide of Spam Continues to Rise, but a Canadian Spammer is Caught

On January 1, 2004, the US CAN-SPAM Act was enacted to curb the flow of spam. A previous issue of E-TIPSâ„¢ (Vol 2 No 2 March 31, 2004) reported that the effectiveness of the legislation had been called into question by the results of a survey of users of personal and business e-mail. Now e-mail security provider MessageLabs Ltd has released figures showing that spam volume is still on the rise, despite the enactment of the legislation. In May 2004, on average, 76% of inbound e-mails were spam, up from 67% in April. A survey of Fortune 500 companies by Nucleus Research Inc showed that in the past 10 months, the cost of spam related to lost employee productivity has more than doubled and users have reported receiving twice as many unsolicited e-mails. Spam filters are also becoming less effective, likely because of the sheer volume of spam received and because of a reluctance to use the most aggressive filters. Although most consider the statute to be a positive measure, there is debate about its adequacy. In addition to using the new legislation to prosecute spammers, ISPs are continuing their efforts to develop other methods, such as domain-level authentication, to reduce spam volumes. In a related story, a Canadian resident, Eric Head, and his brother and father, have settled a lawsuit with Yahoo. They have agreed to stop sending unwanted e-mails and to pay Yahoo at least US$100,000. The Heads were running a spamming operation, sending more than 94 million e-mails to users of Yahoo's e-mail service in one month alone, when they were sued by Yahoo in March under the CAN-SPAM legislation, as part of an industry crack down on unsolicited e-mail. For the news reports, see: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1596134,00.asp; http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1608925,00.asp; or http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z55321F98. Summary by: Clare McCurley