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Spam Your Rights Online

FTC Declares Can-Spam a Success 310

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the official-report-went-to-my-junk-folder dept.
TheSixth1 writes "ZDNet is reporting that the FTC announced in a recent report to Congress [PDF Warning] that the Can-Spam act is 'effective in providing protection for consumers.' The report boasts that the substantive provisions of the Act have mandated adoption of a number of commercial email "best practices" that many legitimate online marketers are now following. Second, the Act has provided law enforcement agencies and ISPs with an additional tool to use when bringing suit against spammers. The more than 50 cases brought to date by the FTC, the Department of Justice, state Attorneys General, and ISPs demonstrate CAN-SPAM's enforcement efficacy."
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FTC Declares Can-Spam a Success More

FTC Declares Can-Spam a Success

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  • A success? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by speedplane ( 552872 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:27AM (#14307548) Homepage
    Errr... Last time I checked I was still getting about 50 spam messages a day.

    • Re:A success? (Score:5, Funny)

      by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfreak.eircom@net> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:31AM (#14307566) Homepage Journal
      Errr... Last time I checked I was still getting about 50 spam messages a day.

      Yes. But now almost 10% of those comply with regulations!

      • Re:A success? (Score:2, Funny)

        by wmajik ( 688431 )
        Yes. But now almost 10% of those comply with regulations!

        But more importantly, can that 10% help me improve my manhood by 200%... because if so..

        /victory

        • Re:A success? (Score:5, Funny)

          by Inda ( 580031 ) <slash.20.inda@spamgourmet.com> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:36AM (#14307741) Journal

          50 a day? pffft

          I get 200 a day and you should see the size of my...

          ...spam folder.

          • I get 300 an hour to each of my 5 accounts and sam doubles every 6 months still. The Can Spam act has done nothing to alter the rise of spam from what I've seen.

            I've been on the net since the mid 80's and the spam problem today is the biggest problem with the net I've seen.

          • Re:A success? (Score:5, Informative)

            by buss_error ( 142273 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @12:59PM (#14310001) Homepage Journal
            50 a day? pffft I get 200 a day and you should see the size of my... ...spam folder.

            The main farm I work in sees - on average - about 150,000 per hour. I filter using an extensive local block list. For instance aside from minor white listings no RIPE, KRNIC, APNIC, LATNIC ip space can email my users. Much of APNIC is in the firewall, so they can't even browse our sites. After that, I use sevearal global block lists.

            At peak, I guetimate over a million spams/viruses/trojans per hour. Normally just before a new worm is announced I'll see someone has turned on the sewer pipe full blast. Desired email runs about 60,000 to 80,000 per day.

            If the FTC wants to say CAN-SPAM works, I'd say I have a lot of offers for amazing pills they should see.

            • Re:A success? (Score:3, Interesting)

              by MightyMartian ( 840721 )
              The FTC and other government agencies have done fuck-all. A few high profile arrests, but the real credit belongs to us long-suffering and now nearly-mad mail admins who have spent the last five years playing catch-up with these bastards and having to deal with all manner of big, medium and small ISPs who didn't give a shit what was spewing out of their networks. My small ISP spent thousands on hardware and software to fend off spam, and worst of all, distributed dictionary attacks that reached into the m

            • Re:A success? (Score:3, Insightful)

              by macdaddy ( 38372 )
              I filter using an extensive local block list. For instance aside from minor white listings no RIPE, KRNIC, APNIC, LATNIC ip space can email my users. Much of APNIC is in the firewall, so they can't even browse our sites.

              So what you're telling me is that that you've elected to block all the registries that do the least amount of good? The vast majority of spam comes from within the US (ARIN) and is directed to English-speaking American consumers. As an avid (sometimes rabid) anti-spammer myself I'd rathe

      • Re:A success? (Score:5, Funny)

        by w3weasel ( 656289 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @09:42AM (#14308271) Homepage
        pffffft.....
        Broke my back from carrying the "grain of salt" I was trying to take with this statement
    • Yep, I call bullshit. I'm still seeing spammers hitting the mail servers at home, for work, and for the LUG whose server I admin. It's not the same old spammers, but it's mostly Russians and Chinese, which really is kinda the same, when you consider that the American spammers have all outsourced and moved their operations offshore to these two countries, both of which have lax laws re: spam that are never enforced. The only thing that's improved in my situation is that I've become more familiar with filt
      • Agreed. I work for a large multinational corporation. The December issue of their internal newspaper stated;
        Around 15 million e-mails are received worldwide every month. Only a fifth of them are related to business matters. All other e-mails, 12 million of them, are identified by [company name] as being infected or as spam mails containing advertising.
        In other words, 80% of incoming e-mail is identified as containing SPAM or a Virus! That is a improvement?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:A success? (Score:3, Informative)

      by QuietLagoon ( 813062 )
      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.

      I still get messages that I call SPAM. However, those messages have removal links, so the FTC does not consider them to be SPAM. That is why the FTC thinks SPAM is leveling off. In reality, I am receiving more SPAM than I ever did.

      The FTC is a political organization, naturally they are going to declare t

    • Errr... Last time I checked I was still getting about 50 spam messages a day.

      I'm at 75, with no end in sight. Actually it's amazingly stable at that number, just the schemes are developing. The GMail spam filter is showing weakness at this time - looks like the spammers are adopting to it.

      It's a FTC propaganda victory - and then quickly a change of subject. No, I'm not expecting effective action from that side :)

      Best approach is to expose the schemes being offered. Currently the penny stock spams are th

      • Actually, I've noticed the spam filters on my webmail accounts (Yahoo and Hotmail) are letting more spam through lately. Perhaps they're just getting better at evading the filters full stop.
    • Last time I checked I was still getting about 50 spam messages a day.

      Just 50? You lucky bastard.

    • 50? God if only. I current admin 11 domains (mine and some friends). Across the entire group I'm seeing about 22-25k a day. The spam filters, bayes filters, and uribl nail about 99.5% of it. So 125 come through per day on average that I see personally and individual spamassassin filters tend to nix that down to ~5-6 a day. Still flusterating, alot of wasted bandwidth.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:28AM (#14307554)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • If only they had listened to Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)

    by melonman ( 608440 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:29AM (#14307556) Journal
    ... we'd still be relying on SPEWS to bully innocent bystanders into bullying ISPs into shutting down spammers after the event.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:56AM (#14307629)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • By "innocent bystanders," do you mean people helping to finance an ISP which caters to spammers?

        Or who have no choice with regards to ISPs because there is only one active in their area?

        So you would prefer that the ISPs not shut down spammers?

        Stupid argument, not agreeing to using 'collatoral damage' to force things onto an ISP is not the same as not wanting those ISPs to remove spammers.

        As long as you and other SPEWS proponents cannot see that difference, you will by most be seen as bullies and as doing mo
        • >>By "innocent bystanders," do you mean people helping to finance an ISP which caters to spammers?

          >Or who have no choice with regards to ISPs because there is only one active in their area?

          If a person is stuck with a SPEWS-listed ISP as their only realistic option to get connectivity, they do still have the option of setting up mail access elsewhere. For example, I hear that Gmail [gmail.com] is the "in" thing these days.

          • For example, I hear that Gmail is the "in" thing these days

            Yeah, and hotmail used to be 'in', and tomorrow it will be someone else. let me tell you what, since the last 2 years I have been running my own little webmail service on a rented server because I want webmail and I don't want to deal with Yahoo, Microsoft, Google or any other such company for that, which costs money but hey, thats my choice.

            Regardless, there is a big difference between specifically blocking IPs that send spam, and blocking ranges w
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @08:17AM (#14307851)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • So they live with dial-up. If the only provider of cable television in my area is NAMBLA, then I'll live with the seven local broadcast channels rather than give NAMBLA my money.

            THat is fine, television is virtually purely entertainment anyway. For quite a few people, having an internet connection is a requirement to get their job done, so you can't exactly compare the 2.

            Then, you might want to realize that this thing called the Internet is not exactly limited to the USA, and that there are many people on t
            • How about only blocking specific IPs that cause spam instead of blocking entire ranges?

              SPEWS (et al) does that. They start with pinpoint blocking, and contact the offending ISP. If no removal occurs, the block expands. It's up to the ISP.

              How about creating a kind of organisation that is transparant enough so it can be held accountable for its actions?

              You're looking for Spamhaus (et al). Nice folks, they're in the building next to that houseboat across the bridge.

              people who proclaim it to be the ulti

          • So they live with dial-up. If the only provider of cable television in my area is NAMBLA, then I'll live with the seven local broadcast channels rather than give NAMBLA my money.

            What do you have against Marlon Brando [wikipedia.org]?

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • The analogy is fairly apt. The anti spam forces did not have the economic power to sptop spam directly. "Terrorism" against an ISP's regular clients creates the pressure. I do however believe you are being unfair to the SPEWS people they were aware of the consequences they just considered them within reason. That is they dislike spam more than most people (a not uncommon situation for activists).

          In a healthy democracy where the government was willing to take real action even if it meant "creating a gove
          • I do however believe you are being unfair to the SPEWS people they were aware of the consequences they just considered them within reason.

            I'm sure they were aware of the consequences. Those consequences are an important part of the 'plan' and the primary means for putting pressure on ISPs.

            The price is always payed by others, and as a result is reduced to mere statistics for those who want to put on the pressure. Considered? maybe.

            When considered, the 'price' is often 'reasoned down' by claiming that the vic

      • By "innocent bystanders," do you mean [...] that "normal" users will find that the ISP cannot reliably deliver e-mail. Those users will pressure the ISP

        That's the essence of the innocent bystander problem, but it's worse than that because there's really no hope that the few who complain will have any impact, so you're just causing pain for the wrong people with no benefit for the people being injured (those who recieve the spam).

        Spamhaus, on the other hand, lists only those IP addresses which originate sp

  • There's a precedent... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:29AM (#14307558) Homepage Journal
    "Mission Accomplished!"
    • They're doing a heckuva job, aren't they?

    • I agree, there's precedent here, although it's a little less tongue-in-cheek than that. What I see is that these bold, sweeping initiatives like "eliminate all spam" have no predetermined quantifiable criteria for success. It'd be one thing if the CAN-SPAM act's goal was "to reduce all spam delivered by 25% by end of 2005 as measured by MessageLabs/BrightMail/whomever". Something like that could be easily evaluated and measured.

      Citing a 62% increase in spam messages that is levelling off (from TFA) is

  • It's a start... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mattygfunk1 ( 596840 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:30AM (#14307562)
    ...but the county producing the most SPAM is still the US [techwhack.com].

    __
    Adult Funny Videos [laughdaily.com]
    • Your typo (county instead of country) caused me to read the link you provided. I have a theory about spam sources.

      I believe in the past a lot of junk email was being traced to Boca Raton, Florida (Palm Beach County). I work for a community college in Florida and we noticed a huge drop in junk email right after Hurricane Wilma. It took at least a month before we started seeing the percentages return to usual (almost 50%). Actually, once things seemed to "return to normal" we experienced a very large increas
      • Comes from Florida, anyway. According to my home-grown spam catcher -- for my personal email -- I've received 3455 spams in the past month from the IP range 69.60.96.0 - 69.60.127.255, currently owned by

        OrgName: Infolink Information Services Inc.
        OrgID: IIS-129
        Address: 2400 E Las Olas Blvd.
        City: Fort Lauderdale
        StateProv: FL
        PostalCode: 33301
        Country: US

        This is just the pile I can catch by IP. I've got many others that are caught via Message-Id, subject line, or something else that, if examined, tur

    • Re:It's a start... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by soliptic ( 665417 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @12:22PM (#14309669) Journal
      Damn right. Nearly all the spam I get is from the US. Weird, then, that slashdot is full of American's sneerily proposing the complete blacklist of China.

      Now, you might say "oh but that spam is sent via Chinese zombies" - I don't care - that's irrelevant. What it's selling is from and for Americans; pharmaceuticals, remortaging, qualifications, you name it - it's all very obviously targetted at an American audience. I couldn't make use of any of it, even if I wanted to (which I obviously don't)! I mean, for fuck's sake, my email address ends in .co.uk, you think they'd get a clue...

  • Tell it to... (Score:3, Funny)

    by cresquin ( 852066 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:30AM (#14307563) Homepage
    ... the Nigerian who sees it necessary to email me once or twice a day.

  • can (Score:2, Funny)

    by jlebrech ( 810586 )
    That's right my favourite type of Spam comes in a can.

  • What TFA didn't tell you... (Score:3, Funny)

    by john83 ( 923470 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:33AM (#14307572)

    The report boasts that the substantive provisions of the Act have mandated adoption of a number of commercial email "best practices" that many legitimate online marketers are now following. Second, the Act has provided law enforcement agencies and ISPs with an additional tool to use when bringing suit against spammers.

    It then went on to offer Congressmen a pre-approved war loan, before asking for its help in liberating $25,000,000 (TWENTY-FIVE MILLION) from terrorism.

  • Pen0r (Score:5, Funny)

    by DavidLeeRoth ( 865433 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:38AM (#14307586)
    According to my inbox, I could have a penis 4 miles long that can be as thick as a tree. i also have tons of hot 18yo babes just wanting to be with me :) I guess its not spam anymore and its real, the success of this act says so!!

  • Whatever... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dance_Dance_Karnov ( 793804 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:38AM (#14307588) Homepage
    I still get 50 spams or so a day and only 25% or so are even in english.
    • only 25% or so are even in english

      I upgraded to the new GTK2 slypheed-claws and now I have properly rendered chinese or japanese spam. At least that is what I assume it is.

  • Text of letter to Congress (Score:5, Funny)

    by loggia ( 309962 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:42AM (#14307602)
    Members of Congress:

    I am Mrs. Branson, a wife of embattled President of war torn
    Liberia, Mr. Branson. My husband just stepped down as President
    of Liberia some months ago, but matters were not helped when UN
    Special War Crimes Court for Sierra Leone indicted my husband
    for war crimes in June last year, demanding his prosecution.

    Currently I and my husband have been granted asylum in Nigeria,
    but I relocated my two sons immediately in July 2003 to Sao Tome
    (a small oil rich island off the coast of West Africa).

    Early last year, he entrusted some large quantities of diamonds
    to me. He told me if anything happened to him, I should use it
    to take care of myself. Fearing its detection due to the volume,
    my son (Williams) traveled to South-Africa with the diamonds...

  • Success for who? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gujo-odori ( 473191 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:43AM (#14307604)
    I work for one of the major email security companies. I can't say that CAN-SPAM has had much effect at all on spam and the spamming spammers who send it - we see just as much spam as ever, and it's just as obfuscated as ever. If anything, the spammers have evolved to be better at hiding their identities than ever before, to avoid CAN-SPAM prosecution. When the law took effect, zombies were out there, but there were also still a lot of netblocks handed to spammers by providers; now, zombies rule the day and static netblocks used by spammers are becoming rarer all the time. Defined in those terms, CAN-SPAM is a bust.

    However, if you want to define "success" as "Good for us and our competitors, who are all signing up lots of new customers every month and seeing better revenue streams all the time" then yes, CAN-SPAM is a resounding success :-)

    • Re:Success for who? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TapeCutter ( 624760 )
      How about making the advertised company the default responsible party for illegal spam unless they can point at a third party or fraud, isn't it the same thing as fining car owners with traffic cameras? Much of the spam is advertising US companies, US law would be best applied to cut off the source of the $$$$.
    • Over the past month or two I have seen a tremendous increase in spam. It looksl like the last major virus attack increased the zombie foot print significantly.

      If ISPs and anyone running an MTA want to eliminate the majority of spam it is easy. Setup greylisting and spamassassin on their MTAs. This will identify and block 99%+ of the spam out there today. But as other have pointed out the reason this does not happen is that most ISPs generate huge amounts of money from spammers.

      I still believe th

  • Next announcement from them will be... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MadCow42 ( 243108 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:44AM (#14307607) Homepage
    "Our new blindfold program has proven effective in preventing the rising and setting of the sun each day. We celebrate the tremendous achievement this program has completed."

    Wow... talk about delusional. :)

    MadCow.

  • Thankfully... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by omeg ( 907329 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:44AM (#14307608)
    My e-mail address has a spam filter on the server, which detects pretty much 98% of all garbage that comes in and labels it [SPAM], which is then sent to my junk mail folder upon download. You can pass a million acts and laws, but it's really things like this that are actually effective.
    • That means your mail server is still accepting all that spam for you. I don't like to give them that satisfaction. I now use a mail sever (Exim 4.50) that rejects spam messages as soon as they are detected. Often enough, this happens after only the headers have been downloaded, so it also saves me bandwidth when Exim doesn't have to download the rest of the message, attachments and all.

  • Simpsons Quote... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Elitist_Phoenix ( 808424 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:48AM (#14307617)
    How come it is when I hear the words inept and idiot I immeadiatly think FTC!

  • Title Misleading (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kai.chan ( 795863 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @06:57AM (#14307639)
    The title of the paper is misleading, it stated that the "FTC staff conducted interviews with 98 individuals," which suggests that with the "enactment of CAN-SPAM, spam volume has begun to decline as has consumer frustration". Of course, the paper is written in such a way that CAN-SPAM was responsible for the "technological and marketplace developments in email since the enactment of CAN-SPAM." In other words, this is nothing but a government agency trying to hide the uselessness of a law they passed by taking credit for the technological advancements that combat spam.
  • At our site we have about 100 users. We get around 65000 messages a day with about 0.5% being real emails. Each day we get email sent to about 4000 different user names. So I guess the can spam act does work after all.

  • How is that a success? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lord sibn ( 649162 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:26AM (#14307714)
    It was never the legitimate online businesses you had to worry about, anyway. The impetus to comply with the law only means increased operating expenses for legitimate businesses, and working overseas for the rest.

  • CAN-SPAM (Score:2, Interesting)

    by thejynxed ( 831517 )
    Man, talk about your misnomers...

    I get just as much spam in my inbox as I did before this useless law. It does absolutely nothing to punish or restrict anyone outside of the United States (or who uses botnets and the like). That coupled with the fact that many commercial retailers bury their stupid opt-out in the bottom of several pages of spamvertisements in their emails (hey, they are technically complying after all) pretty much make this a useless law. Google's filters don't work for shite in this matter

  • Spam damage (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jotii ( 932365 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @07:34AM (#14307734) Homepage
    What if there actually was a pair of hot 18yo lesbians longing for me? I'd think it was spam and delete it. I'd be spam-damaged.
  • Next you will be telling me that the USA has achieved peace in Iraq and the war on drugs has been a success.
  • The FTC must love Viagra and degrees from unaccredited universities.
  • What is the penalty for lying to congress?

  • Wow! 50 is a big number... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by un1xl0ser ( 575642 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @08:09AM (#14307835)
    The more than 50 cases brought to date by the FTC, the Department of Justice, state Attorneys General, and ISPs demonstrate CAN-SPAM's enforcement efficacy.

    Since when did a simple number demonstrate efficiency? They got 50 spammers.. out of how many? 500? 5000? 50,000? Who knows.

    We eliminated the two major drug cartels in town. Great JOB! I'm sure that there won't be even more rising from their ashes, and maybe even a turf war.

    There still is a need for SPAM, so spammers will still exist.
  • The below piece of the article is so correct. Anyone here receive junk mail which actually cites that it is can spam compliant, despite the fact they illegally obtained your e-mail address to spam in you in the first place? I don't trust opting out of something I never signed up for in the first place.

    Some critics of Can-Spam, which requires an opt-out approach rather than a stricter "opt in" standard, have even suggested that the law may have increased the amount of junk e-mail. That's because Congress

  • Can Spam = 100% government corruption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @08:20AM (#14307866) Homepage
    It seemed to me that Can Spam was 100% government corruption. A few have been prosecuted, for show. However, spam has increased.

    The purpose of Can Spam was to stop U.S. states from enacting their own legislation. Can Spam made all the laws in the states invalid.
  • I hear they had a giant banner hung in the US Capitol saying:

    'Mission Accomplished'
  • This is so futile on so many different levels I can't stand it.

    Of course the government is going to congratulate themselves on a job well done when they haven't done anything.

    Cripes they just did this with the "Do Not Call" registry as well.

    What cooks my noodle the most, however, is:

    1. Slashdot thinks it's news. I feel like I'm getting poked with a stick here.
    2. There isn't anything we could do about it even is we wanted to.
    and 3. If it's so trivial and "ridiculous" why did I just take the time and effort t
  • an email to everyone letting them know.

    On the other hand, CANSPAM has "worked" for me in one respect in that a lot of the sexually explicit spam I used to get is now identified in the subject field as SEXUALLY EXPLICIT (as required by the law). Other than making it incredibly easy to filter out people like me are still receiving this shit so the spam level is the same.

    Whatever.
  • *shrug* Honestly, it's been about as effective for me as the Do-Not-Call list. You still have people claiming exemptions and people who just plain ignore the rules, but my amount of spam has decreased. Right now, the only spam I get is either companies who did business with two years ago who're still sending me commercial literature and recently I've been getting a spate of classic Nigerian scam letters.
  • Only the hidden objective (yes, you CAN SPAM as long as you keep the coin-operated legislation machine fed) has been any sort of success.

    A genuine anti-spam law consistent with legitimate free speech concerns (e.g. severe penalties for the fraud of disguising bulk e-mail as non-bulk) is still needed.

  • State troopers accross the country celebrate the toughened speed limits. "We are confident people are speeding less", says State Trooper D Onut and quotes the 1000 daily speeding tickets state troopers hand out each and every day. Speeding violations are up from 300 / day since the toughened speed limits.

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