FTC Says Federal Spam Law Has Worked

ZDNet ^ | 12/21/05 | Anne Broache

[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."...

[steve-b]

What a crock.

[atomicpossum]

Congress. Out of it's depth on technical matters.

[sheltonmac]

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.

Now maybe they can get to work on a law protecting us from all the BS out of Washington.

[Roccus]

Congress is out of it's depth on anything that is more than posturing.

[P-40]

cited as evidence that a law enacted two years ago is working.

Not to pee on their parade or anything...but the law is what you could kindly call a joke. The fight against spam is not going to be stopped by some feel-good legislation. Now if the FTC were to seriously go after the spammers, that might make a difference...but so far they have not done so. Yes, there has been a case or two in the news but that is about it. 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?

[festus]

Crime has more or less leveled off too. Proof positive gun control works.

/sarcasm off.

[steve-b]

Congress. Out of it's depth on technical matters.

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.

[proxy_user]

"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.

[George from New England]

Hello?

It's coming from off shore.

[P-40]

Not correct. Many spam emails contain no valid email addresses or URLs.

A lot of address don't...many do. There is one very reliable factor in spam though...they want money. To get money in their pockets, at some point the spammer will need to deliver a way to do this and often the information gained will be all you need to start a very simple investigation. There are of course other ways of getting around that, but you start getting into the realm of the spam receipiant have to be incredibly stupid to follow through on the deal.

[George from New England]

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.

[P-40]

It's coming from off shore.

And many of the people responsible for initiating the spam are located here.

[CFC__VRWC]

But the number is leveling off, which federal officials on Tuesday cited as evidence that a law enacted two years ago is working.

That must by why I deleted only 400 or so spam messages from my work e-mail on Monday.

[TommyDale]

The male enhancement messages must have been exempted by Congress, probably because they need it.

[Bender2]

You can forward spam e-mails to the Feds at Spam@uce.gov

[MajorityOfOne]

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).

[Lazamataz]

FTC Says Federal Spam Law Has Worked

I always liked Federal cheese.

I've never had Federal spam.

[George from New England]

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?

[Labyrinthos]

What a crock.

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.