The State of Spam

Spam has become more than just an annoying piece of mail selling products or offering low-interest mortgages. It has evolved into a virus-carrying medium used to hijack computers to distribute more spam, an instrument of spurious appeals for cash, leading unsuspecting users to fraudulent websites with the sole purpose of stealing credit card and other financial information.

Such is the state of spam today that it has been dubbed as the curse of the information age. It has reached such alarming proportions that governments across the globe are now frantically trying to find ways to stem its tide. The European Union is urging its member states to ban spam while legislation is being debated in the US Senate to implement other measures - including a national ‘do-not-spam’ list.

Needless to say, spam has become a hot issue in the political arena. Meanwhile, spamming is increasingly becoming a very costly nuisance for companies and individuals.

Special Feature     Teenager Barred From Sending E-Mail Spam

United States of America     Do-Not-Spam List Finds Favor as Senate Vote Nears     Spam Filings Flood Court

Europe     EU Takes Action on Growing E-mail spam     Germany Moves to Crack Down on Spam E-mail

Asia - Pacific     Australian Spam Gets the Chop     Calls for Action to Ban Spam

International News     UPS Sends Legal Message to spammers     Spam Annoyance Leveling Off

Opinion    Spam - The Result of Irresponsible E-mail Use

Letters To The Editor

Teenager Barred From Sending E-Mail Spam

The Federal Trade Commission has settled a civil action against a 17-year-old California boy who created a fake America Online Web site to collect credit card and other personal financial information from unwitting consumers. He was barred from sending out spam e-mails and will be forced to give up about $3500 in profits from his venture, which ran from July to December 2002. A federal court in central California must formally approve the settlement.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that the complaint against the unnamed teenager is the agency's first law enforcement action against identity theft through a growing online scam called "phishing."

"Phishing is a two-time scam," FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris said in a statement. "Phishers first steal a company's identity and then use it to victimize consumers by stealing their credit identities."

Source: Los Angeles Times, IDG News Service

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Do-Not-Spam List Finds Favor as Senate Vote Nears

Three out of four Americans favor a "do not spam" registry to keep unwanted e-mail at bay, according to a recent survey as the U.S. Senate prepared to vote on the issue before its August break.

Patterned after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)'s popular "do not call" registry of households that do not wish to hear from telemarketers, the list would theoretically allow Internet users to make their inboxes off-limits to the online marketers whose unsolicited offers now make up nearly half of all e-mail traffic.

The registry has found an advocate in Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, who hopes to include a do-not-spam proposal in an anti-spam bill that could come up for a vote in the Senate this month.

In testimony before Congress, the FTC has been lukewarm to the idea. Critics say the list would be widely ignored by spammers and would divert resources better spent tracking down those who peddle dubious get-rich-quick schemes.

Source: Reuters

Spam Filings Flood Court

Advocates of Utah's anti-spam law, bloodied in the opening round of their fight against unsolicited e-mail, have roared back into the courtroom arena.

Third District Judge Denise Lindberg, who dismissed Salt Lake City attorney Denver Snuffer's proposed class-action lawsuit against Sprint Communications four months ago, now faces a backlog of about 1,200 new complaints against scores of alleged spammers.

The flood of lawsuits, brought over the past year by Snuffer and Jesse Riddle, a Draper lawyer, is the first of many waves of such filings Lindberg's Sandy court can likely expect.

The suits are being filed under Utah's 14-month-old Unsolicited E-Mail Act, which provides for fines of $10 per unwanted e-mail up to a maximum of $25,000 per day. If the spate of new complaints is certified as a class action, potential damages could easily be in the multiple millions of dollars.

Source: The Salt Lake Tribune

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EU Takes Action on Growing E-mail spam

The European Commission, the executive arm of the 15-member European Union (EU), said in a statement, that a global effort is needed to fight the curse of spam, the junk e-mail that clogs up computer systems everywhere.

EU Commissioner, Erkki Liikanen, urged member states to apply a new law on spam, which will come into force from October. Under this new law, e-mail marketing will only be allowed with prior consent from the recipient.

Liikanen quoted industry figures showing around 48 percent of global e-mail traffic was spam and time wasted in clearing it out of inboxes cost firms $2.8 billion in productivity. Most of the nuisance mails were selling products, including financial services, 24 percent was pornography-related while six percent was fraud letters, such as a now well-known get-rich-quick scheme of mails purporting to be from Nigeria.

Source: Reuters

Germany Moves to Crack Down on Spam E-mail

The German government is moving to crack down on unwanted commercial e-mail known as "spam" and will submit an anti-spam bill to parliament later this year, Consumer Protection Minister Renate Kuenast confirmed.

According to Kuenast, the bill would make it an offence for spam e-mails to be sent to people without their prior consent and allow the authorities to take any profits made illegally by the practice.

Source: AFP

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Australian Spam Gets the Chop

The Australian federal government intends to introduce legislation later this year that will ban unsolicited commercial e-mail, the minister for communications and information technology, senator Richard Alston announced recently.

The legislation is in response to a report by the National Office for the Information Economy, released in April this year, which advocated a multi-layered approach to Spam prevention.

The government stressed its commitment not to harm legitimate e-mail direct marketing as long as it was "in line with the requirements of the Privacy Act".

However, the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) is concerned that the legislation may adversely affect many local small and medium-sized businesses that use e-mail as a legitimate marketing tool.

The legislation would include a 120-day 'sunrise period' after it was enacted to allow businesses to ensure their practices were in line with its requirements.

Source: ZDNet Australia

Calls for Action to Ban Spam

SINGAPORE - Regulators in Singapore are reviewing a list of anti-spam measures while an overwhelming number of consumers in the United States favor legally banning spam or limiting it by law.

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) here is keeping a close watch on international developments in the arena, said The Business Times. It cited two surveys revealing 80 per cent of US consumers polled want spam to be banned or limited by law. About 60 per cent favor charging spammers in court under criminal prosecution laws.

Source: Borneo Bulletin

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UPS Sends Legal Message to Spammers

United Parcel Service of America is tackling computer spam with a federal suit that seeks more than $1 million in damages from unnamed spammers.

In June, the Atlanta-based parcel delivery service sued individuals identified only as John Does 1-10, seeking an injunction that would bar them from transmitting e-mail messages that either purport to originate from UPS or use its trademark.

According to the suit, the spammers began sending thousands of unsolicited advertisements to UPS customers in March. The e-mails contained headers that made them appear to have originated from UPS or its employees, the suit claims.

The e-mails prompted hundreds of customer complaints "under the mistaken belief that the employees were responsible for sending spam e-mails," according to the suit.

Source: Law.com

Spam Annoyance Leveling Off

While Internet users are broadly in favor of legislation outlawing "mass spamming," more people are accepting spam as an everyday hassle, according to a new Harris Poll report.

In the last six months, support for legislation outlawing spam has gone up five percentage points, from 74 percent in December 2002, to 79 percent in May 2003.

On the other hand, the number of people who said that spam was 'very annoying' dropped significantly from last year. In 2003, 64 percent used that phrase to describe spam, a dramatic decline from the 80 percent in 2002.

On average, respondents said about 40 percent of the e-mails they receive per day are spam. Pornography remains the biggest annoyance, followed by mortgage and loan offers and pharmaceuticals. Interestingly, spam in some categories is not rated as that annoying. Fewer than half of respondents said spam for software and computer hardware annoyed them.

Source: Cyberatlas, TechWeb News

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Opinions From Inspector Mails Inspector Mails is the AI entity for Bigfoot's Anti-spam Solution. He will be giving regular updates on his opinions on current anti-spam trends.

Spam - The Result of Irresponsible E-mail Use

E-mail is a powerful and invaluable tool for business and for personal communication. Recent industry studies have shown that its use will become more deeply entrenched in the coming years.

The threat to e-mail, spam, which accompanied the maturity of this medium, has also grown dramatically. It is now the number one problem of e-mail users everywhere and is getting worse.

Spam is basically the result of the irresponsible use of e-mail. People started abusing it when they discovered that they could send thousands of messages with the same effort and expense it takes to send one. The staggering costs associated with e-mail abuse are real. They have been documented and quantified.

Varied approaches to controlling spam have been proposed and implemented. Education and legal measures are just some of them. However, for a solution to be truly effective, it has to be as dynamic as spam. The Bigfoot Anti-spam Solution is a very potent weapon against spam since it is able to respond rapidly to changes and new developments. With Bigfoot Anti-spam, e-mail users can again have full control over what they receive in their inboxes.

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