There must be a reason all of us have to put up with spam or waste money or hours cleaning it up. Damned if I can figure out what it is.
Politicians have long been responsible for cleaning things up. They see to garbage collection and snow removal. Failure in these areas is a prompt path to permanent political purgatory.
Why are they still in business when they can't won't clean up spam?
The river is rising. In the past six months, I've noticed an increase in the number of messages arriving in my inbox. In January I wrote that I was on a pace to receive 40,000 pieces this year; now I'm convinced the number will be higher.
Compare that with the number of legitimate emails I get, which is about 20,000 per year.
June 3, 2007
I recently sent my new congressman one of my regular mailings to elected officials regarding spam. I'm sad to say that past responses to my letters have been very weak; Congressman Sarbanes' was no different. He did send me a copy of a Congressional Research Service report titled "'Spam': An Overview of Issues Concerning Commercial Electronic Mail." (There is an older, published version, dated September 6, 2006, here.)
This report is somewhat disappointing. It does provide an excellent overview of the history of spam and past government action regarding spam, as well as the provisions of CAN-SPAM. However, it misses four of my five talking points about spam and it completely ducks the issue of how unsolicited messages were handled for fax transmissions, which I consider a vital point. The report describes all the issues with approximately the same tone, giving them approximately the same weight. It is not an action document by any means and I don't see how our elected representatives can draw any reasonable conclusions from it.
The most interesting thing in the report is the following, from page 8 (emphasis is mine):
During consideration of the CAN-SPAM Act, then-FTC Chairman Timothy Muris and other FTC officials repeatedly expressed skepticism about the advisability of a Do Not Email registry despite widespread public support for it.22
And in footnote 22 we find:
A survey by the ePrivacy Group found that 74% of consumers want such a list.
No kidding! The spam problem affects anyone with an email address, so it's no surprise to see a result like that. So why isn't something being done about it?
April 18, 2007
Has the CAN-SPAM law, now about three years old, made a difference?
In 2003, I was receiving about 16,000 junk emails per year. 2003 was also the year that several state anti-spam laws went into effect. By early 2004, the annual volume had dropped to 10,000, a reflection that the spammers were adjusting to meet the stiff requirements of state laws like California's.
2004 saw CAN-SPAM go into effect. The federal law took precedence over the better, stronger state laws, all of which then went out of effect.
The result? My measured volume right now is over 40,000 per year.
That number does not begin to reflect the actual volume of junk reaching my hosting company's server. Spammers and those nasty virus guys, having found a responsive domain, make up email addresses within that domain and attack, hoping that something gets through. One of my small clients' internal mail server receives about 4,600 emails per day and rejects over 90% of those. That's 1.5 million pieces of junk per year to one small business.
CAN-SPAM is junk. I call it the Yes-I-Can-Spam law because its result has been more, not less, spam. Worse, CAN-SPAM prevents individuals from taking any legal action against spammers, leaving that in the hands of ISPs and government agencies. Government hasn't done much. There have been a couple of suits from ISPs but those targeted specific business issues, not the more general problem.
BAN-SPAM! Think that's a violation of free speech? Did you know that it's illegal to send an unsolicited fax? Check it out, then write your representative.
January 29, 2007