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IS CAN-SPAM WORKING?
It has been more than two years since Congress passed the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, better known as CAN-SPAM, in an attempt to stem the increasing flow of unsolicited commercial e-mails into our electronic in boxes.

In December, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), acting on a directive in the CAN-SPAM Act, released an analysis of the effectiveness and enforcement of the act’s provisions to date with the goal of advising Congress on any changes or modifications that may need to be made to the law.

As anyone whose in box continues to be flooded with junk e-mail might suspect, the FTC’s report was a mixed review of small gains and large continuing problems.

The agency said that some inroads have been made in dealing with the spam, citing a study by e-mail security firm MX Logic that found junk e-mail accounted for 67 percent of all e-mail messages during the first eight months of 2005—a 9 percent decrease from that period in 2004. Antispam technologies also accounted for a 75 percent decrease in the amount of junk e-mail America Online subscribers received in 2004 as compared with the previous year, the FTC noted.

In addition, the CAN-SPAM Act has provided a much-needed legal framework for prosecuting commercial bulk e-mailers acting illegally, the agency said, citing some 50 cases filed against spammers by the FTC, the U.S. Department of Justice, state attorneys general and Internet service providers since the adoption of CAN-SPAM.

Despite the good news, the FTC report acknowledged that some vexing problems with nuisance e-mail persist. It described a "troubling" shift toward "the inclusion in spam messages of content that is increasingly malicious. Rather than merely advertising products and services, spam message now sometimes include ‘malware’ designed to harm the recipient."

Among the malicious uses of e-mail highlighted were the spread of Internet worms, viruses and "phishing" schemes that seek to collect sensitive financial information through the use of phony Web sites disguised as legitimate ones.

Spam originating from overseas continues to plague e-mail users in the United States, the FTC said. While the United States remains the largest source of spam, it accounts for only about one-quarter of the junk e-mail sent worldwide.

So what are we to do about spam if our current laws leave these significant problems unresolved? The FTC report recommended three courses of action.

– It urged Congress to pass the cleverly named Undertaking Spam, Spyware, And Fraud Enforcement With Enforcers Beyond Borders (US SAFE WEB) Act, which would expand the FTC’s powers to combat spam sent from sources outside the United States.

– Technological solutions—including antispam tools available from many Internet service providers, as well as commercially available software—also should be brought to bear on the spam problem, according to the agency, particularly in protecting children from exposure to sexually explicit content.

– Finally, the FTC recommended an improved system for registering Internet domain names that would make it more difficult for spammers to operate anonymously.

Reported by Joe Hoyle, electronic media editor, "hoylej{at}ada.org".

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