Posted on 12/21/2005 6:46:33 AM PST by steve-b
WASHINGTON--About 70 percent of the world's e-mail messages continue to be spam. But the number is leveling off, which federal officials on Tuesday cited as evidence that a law enacted two years ago is working.
At a press conference here, the Federal Trade Commission released a report (click here for PDF), delivered last week to Congress, that said the so-called Can-Spam Act is "effective in providing protection for consumers."...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.zdnet.com ...
Congress. Out of it's depth on technical matters.
Now maybe they can get to work on a law protecting us from all the BS out of Washington.
Crime has more or less leveled off too. Proof positive gun control works.
/sarcasm off.
Yep.
Basically, the anti-spam law we need boils down to "Do not disguise bulk e-mail to look like non-bulk e-mail. If you do, we'll take away any of your stuff we can trace to the fraudulent bulk e-mail and send you to live as the Bride of Bubba for 5-10".
Either spammers would have to give up their various methods of evading spam filtering (i.e. their crap could then be 99.9+% reliably autodropped into the bit bucket without risk to legitimate e-mail) or not (i.e. they'd be slam-dunked when caught). Note that there is no freedom-of-speech issue: it's long-settled law that fraud (which is the target of such a law, independent of the acutal message communicated) is not protected speech.
"When the spammer gives you either their address or the address of the business they are spamming for...how hard is it to go after them?
Not correct. Many spam emails contain no valid email addresses or URLs.
Hello?
It's coming from off shore.
Phone number maybe.
But if the intent of spam is to sell, it's useless without contact provisions.
Some of the useless spam is testing the waters for future selling spam or selling email addresses for future spammers.
That must by why I deleted only 400 or so spam messages from my work e-mail on Monday.
The male enhancement messages must have been exempted by Congress, probably because they need it.
You can forward spam e-mails to the Feds at Spam@uce.gov
I've noticed an increase in stock pumping spams lately. These need no reply info, as they only encourage you to go out and buy the stock. Even more clever, more are making use of imbedded graphics for the text rather than actual text itself (which is more easily spotted by filters).
I always liked Federal cheese.
I've never had Federal spam.
Don't you think the SEC should be able to do something about as you put it, these stock pumping spam images?
That is of course if the SEC cared. Security Exchange Commitee?
You are too nice. I still average about 50 spams a day on three seperate email addresses, despite having multiple spam filters. About half of them are from off-shore and do not comply with the "opt out" provision in the Federal Law. The other half are domestic, and while they comply with Federal Law, the burden is on me to spend/waste the time "unsubscribing" to something that I never subscribed to in the first place.
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