Can-Spam Increased Spam 362
andy1307 writes "According to New York Times, spam has actually gone up [Free registration required. You gave real info, right?] since the CAN-SPAM act went into effect. There is a graphic in the article that illustrates this increase. Before the CAN-SPAM act was passed, spam was about 60% of all e-mail traffic. Now it's 80%. In a we-told-you-so quote, Steve Linford, the founder of the Spamhaus Project, says CAN-SPAM legalized spam by giving bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed certain rules. Slashdot covered this story last year. For companies that offer offshore "bulk advertising" servers, business is booming. A survey from Stanford University estimates the global cost of spam in terms of lost productivity to be at 50 billion $ and 17 billion $ in the US alone. CAN-SPAM does give prosecutors some leverage to go after the merchants - but it must be proved that they knew, or should have known, that their wares were being fed into the illegal spam chain. " The BBC has a related story talking about rates of spam, viruses, and scam mail.
And the spammers seemed like such nice people (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And the spammers seemed like such nice people (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And the spammers seemed like such nice people (Score:3, Interesting)
Duh... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Duh... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Duh... (Score:2)
> clueless legislators? Spammers do!
Well there's that wonderously horrible grey area between unsolicited and solicited spam. We have to deal with this on an infrequent basis, where people actually do sign up for things, and then whine and snivel when mail comes. Clearly you can't define it legally as "anything a user doesn't want to see in his Inbox".
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then stop creating webforms that automatically check the box saying that people want your spam.
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Informative)
Quite right. AND be sure you are confirming opt-ins (ie... send a confirmation email to the address with a unique URL which must be clicked to confirm subscription). Otherwise, anyone can signup anyone else... and there are some mailbomb programs out there that automate this
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Spam is **** NEVER **** sollicited.
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Corrolation != Cause & effect
[tt]:Duh... (Score:4, Interesting)
These are the same people who put exemptions in the law to allow them to send unsolicited bulk email to you.
Me, I'm saving ALL my spam for the next election. (I also keep it so I can train my filters, but that's another story).
Any politician who wants my vote can have it easily:
FTFA:
Cause and Effect (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly the spam I'm receiving isn't conforming to can-spam, which would be expected if there was a correlation.
Most of what I see is either fake viagra, hosting services, free rolexes, or Nigerians that just want me to take their money. None of which complies with can-spam.
Just because spam has increased in the period since can-spam was passed doesn't mean that can-spam's responsible for it.
Re:Cause and Effect (Score:3, Interesting)
Any more than an increase in global temperature following the Can-Spam Act must mean that the law is causing global warming. Looking at the graph, spam rapidly increases after Can-Spam goes into effect, but it was rapidly increasing anyway. You can't pick out any effect of the law one way or the other.
It's a shame too... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a shame too... (Score:5, Funny)
What do you have against archaeologists from the future?
Re:I THOUGHT TO I UP THE FUCK SHUT YOU TOLD (Score:5, Funny)
Remember kids, Jolt Cola and HP calculators simply DO NOT mix!! Just say no.
what's to attribute specifically to CAN-SPAM? (Score:5, Interesting)
what's the fraction of spam that's sent which is CAN-SPAM compliant? how has that increased? (no i didn't RTFA since i haven't registered. does the article answer this?)
Slashdot, Jxyama. Jxyama, Slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
--LordPixie
Re:Slashdot, Jxyama. Jxyama, Slashdot. (Score:3)
Re:Slashdot, Jxyama. Jxyama, Slashdot. (Score:2)
--LordPixie
Cross your T's and dot your... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Cross your T's and dot your... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdot, Jxyama. Jxyama, Slashdot. (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot, Jxyama. Jxyama, Slashdot. (Score:2)
So it seems that the pessimism is unwarranted
Misleading Statistic (Score:2)
Re:what's to attribute specifically to CAN-SPAM? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Can Spam legalized spamming itself," said Steve Linford, the founder of the Spamhaus Project, a London organization that is one of the leading groups intent on eliminating junk e-mail. And in making spam legal, he said, the new rules also invited flouting by those intent on being outlaws.
Not everyone agrees that the Can Spam law is to blame, and lawsuits invoking the new legislation - along with ot
Correlation != Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only was this law SUPPOSED to reduce spam (by the charts, it hasn't)
But it was also supposed to make it easier to prosecute spammers who failed to follow it
AND it REPLACED state laws that were far stricter in their definitions and punishments.
It's a damn sight more difficult to get a FEDERAL case filed than it is to get one in your STATE courts.
We need to get rid of that stupid law and let the state courts handle it (they need the money from the judgements, anyway).
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:2)
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:3, Insightful)
(For the USA) As I understand it, this started in the mid 80's during the Regan Administration. (Not because of Regan) When Network News started to consider themselves more as Entertainment rather than Information.
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:2)
Advice that the original poster might want to take to heart as well.
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:2)
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:5, Insightful)
And I see that R'ing TFA is still lost on most Slashdotters these days...
This is not an article about how CAN-SPAM has increased spam. It is an article about how spam has increased despite CAN-SPAM. That is a very different thing. Several viewpoints are given from all sides involved on why it's happening, but at no time does the article itself suggest CAN-SPAM is the cause - only that it has not been an effective deterrent.
I think that's something we can all agree on.
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:4, Insightful)
Including whoever named this
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:2)
Thats why we run all kinds of fun statistical tests to see how relevant certain variables are.
Anyways, solutions: inform these companies (by registered mail, return receipt required, etc) just how their products are being sold.
Now you can show "that they knew, or should have known, that their wares were being fed into the illegal spam chain"
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:2)
Re:Correlation != Causality (Score:2)
Correlation != Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Look at the graph. What exactly do they think that graph shows? To me it looks like a perfect trendline.
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:2)
Re:Correlation != Causation (Score:2)
Could this have nothing to do with Can-Spam? (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's the problem (Score:3, Funny)
This is the problem. Until the business of spamming stops producing profits, spam won't stop. It's beyond my comprehension why anyone would buy anything from spam.
Re:Here's the problem (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Here's the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Response rate for junk-mail in the real world is something like 2%, maybe less. Yet advertisers throw piles of money into doing it, because the income that 2% brings them is worth it. To them.
Spam is even easier.. there's no material cost involved to print up paper. Assuming spammers charge normal advertising rates, their profits are up a considerable amount.
Re:Here's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Rules (Score:2, Interesting)
So um... If they are following a standard set of rules, then logic seems to tell me that someone isn't apply their server side rules to full effect. No?
Can-Span? (Score:2)
Re:Can-Span? (Score:2)
Oh well... (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is exactly what we have been saying all along. No matter what laws are passed, no matter what we do to combat spam, the spammers will always find another way to make a buck.
One of the spammers quoted in the article claimed that he didn't care about the lawsuits... He was making too much money to stop.
If you're making too much money and they somehow make a law that actually works stick do you think that they are just going to go away? Yeah, I do, to other countries where those laws won't mean anything...
Keep those firewalls banning entire countries (.kr and
Some solutions to spam (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Legislate so that merhandise sold using spam cannot legally demand payment (eg via visa/mastercard). Puts alot of pain onto these companies, but also would make it quite unattractive to sell stuff this way if you knew that the money you got could be reclaimed if it was demonstrated that you used spam as an advertising medium
2) Employ teams of people to respond to SPAM (at a government level). SPAM works because they get a low return rate, but the people who do respond actually buy stuff. Thats what keeps it all going. If we made it so that a decent percentage of the replies were time wasters, the average company would suddenly have to employ lots of resources to deal with false responses. In effect, it would spam them. Suddenly its no longer as cheap to advertise this way.
Just a couple of thoughts, but I'd love to see what the
Michael
Re:Some solutions to spam (Score:2)
This wouldn't work as they use a computer system to t
I don't like item 2 (Score:2)
I think the proper way to deal with spam is to crystal-clearly define it and make it illegal. Then have a division of the FBI that purchases items and follows the money trail.
If it truly is 90% American companies that are behind the actual products sold in spam this should work.
Re:Some solutions to spam (Score:4, Interesting)
I want to hand the call off to an automated time-waster - then set up league tables to show how long a call the automated system could provide. Heck - it could even become a competitive sport! A sophisticated system may 'listen' for keywords and then use them in its responses... but I think there would be great mileage in just asking the caller to repeat what they just said because "the line is bad and I'm a bit deaf..." by feigning memory problems or introducing bizarre non-sequiturs. I know it would be a lot of work - but I think the comedy value of the pay-back would make it all worth-while.
Stats appear at least vaguely correct.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to wonder if you can really say that CAN-SPAM made it get worse. To me it looks like there was a brief drop off, and then it resumed the normal climb. Do we seriously believe that a significant amount of spam wasn't sent before CAN-SPAM, because the originators were worried about it being illegal? Seriously?
What percentage of the spam complied? (Score:2)
Coincidental Correlation (Score:5, Insightful)
Definition:
The name in Latin means "after this therefore because of this".
This describes the fallacy. An author commits the fallacy when
it is assumed that because one thing follows another that the
one thing was caused by the other.
Examples:
(i) Immigration to Alberta from Ontario increased. Soon
after, the welfare rolls increased. Therefore, the increased
immigration caused the increased welfare rolls.
(ii) I took EZ-No-Cold, and two days later, my cold
disappeared.
Proof:
Show that the correlation is coincidental by showing that: (i)
the effect would have occurred even if the cause did not
occur, or (ii) that the effect was caused by something other
than the suggested cause.
References
(Cedarblom and Paulsen: 237, Copi and Cohen: 101)
'Nother example (Score:2)
All men wear trousers
Therefore all men have two legs.
Re:'Nother example (Score:3, Funny)
(kilts are better than trousers, clearly)
Re:Coincidental Correlation (Score:2)
Increased? (Score:2)
Re:Increased? (Score:2)
No Registration Link & Article Text (Score:3, Informative)
Article Text:
A year after a sweeping federal antispam law went into effect, there is more junk e-mail on the Internet than ever, and Levon Gillespie, according to Microsoft, is one reason.
Lawyers for the company seemed well on the way to shutting down Mr. Gillespie last September after he agreed to meet them at a Starbucks in Los Angeles near the University of Southern California. There they served him a court summons and a lawsuit accusing him, his Web site and 50 unnamed customers of violating state and federal law - including the year-old federal Can Spam Act - by flooding Microsoft's internal and customer e-mail networks with illegal spam, among other charges.
But that was the last the company saw of the young entrepreneur.
Mr. Gillespie, who operated a service that gives bulk advertisers off-shore shelter from the antispam crusade, did not show up last month for a court hearing in King County, Wash. The judge issued a default judgment against him in the amount of $1.4 million.
In a telephone interview yesterday from his home in Los Angeles, Mr. Gillespie, 21, said he was unaware of the judgment and that no one from Microsoft or the court had yet followed up. But he insisted that he had done nothing wrong and vowed that lawsuits would not stop him - nor any of the other players in the lucrative spam chain.
"There's way too much money involved," Mr. Gillespie said, noting that his service, which is currently down, provided him with a six-figure income at its peak. "And if there's money to be made, people are going to go out and get it."
Since the Can Spam Act went into effect in January 2004, unsolicited junk e-mail on the Internet has come to total perhaps 80 percent or more of all e-mail sent, according to most measures. That is up from 50 percent to 60 percent of all e-mail before the law went into effect.
To some antispam crusaders, the surge comes as no surprise. They had long argued that the law would make the spam problem worse by effectively giving bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed certain rules.
"Can Spam legalized spamming itself," said Steve Linford, the founder of the Spamhaus Project, a London organization that is one of the leading groups intent on eliminating junk e-mail. And in making spam legal, he said, the new rules also invited flouting by those intent on being outlaws.
Not everyone agrees that the Can Spam law is to blame, and lawsuits invoking the new legislation - along with other suits using state laws - have been mounted in the name of combating the problem. Besides Microsoft, other large Internet companies like AOL and Yahoo have used the federal law as the basis for suits.
Two prolific spam distributors, Jeremy D. Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot, were convicted under a Virginia antispam law in November, and a $1 billion judgment was issued in an Iowa federal court against three spam marketers in December.
The law's chief sponsor, Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, said that it was too soon to judge the law's effectiveness, although he indicated in an e-mail message that the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees its enforcement, might simply need some nudging.
"As we progress into the next legislative session," Mr. Burns said, "I'll be working to make sure the F.T.C. utilizes the tools now in place to enforce the act and effectively stem the tide of this burden."
The F.T.C. has made some recent moves that include winning a court order in January to shut down illegal advertisi
More spam (Score:2, Informative)
Re:More spam (Score:2)
Yeah, I've been trying to figure this out too. I've got 3 accounts, and 2 never get spam. The third one has some filters set up that eliminates most of the minute amount that is left. I rarely get more than 4 emails a month that I actually have to do anything for.
Not quite... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, in plain text: It didn't accelerate SPAM. It just didn't do anything to stop it.
The problem wtih trying to outlaw spam (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way we'll actually see a reduction in spam is to put true measures in the MTAs such that there is absolutely no way to mask the sender's address or host, and completely disallow any form of relaying. Then, you have to start setting up the MTAs to not accept any mail delivered by older versions.
Yes, I realize the impact this would have on the internet and e-mail delivery... but if you want to eliminate it, or at least be able to truly identify the sender, this is about the only way to actually do it.
Re:The problem wtih trying to outlaw spam (Score:2)
I know this is not what you mean, but how about making it normal and allowed for mailservers to refuse to transport spam? For instance, a mail from some spammer hits my server and has to be delivered to you. I know it is a spam, so why do I *have* to forward it? Everyone says you have to forward emails becuase it isn't your authority to decide what is and is not spam. That is where this relates - what is your authority to decide relaying is all spam?
In my opin
Stopping Spam (Score:2)
I realise this might not be the easiest thing in the world to do, given the shady nature of both spammers and their clients but on the whole I would imagine the companies are the kind of companies trading standards etc would be interested in anyway.
What we need is new laws and investment into shutting down dodgy businesses who feel the need to use spamming and other annoying bulk marketing.
IPTables really helps. (Score:5, Informative)
A reasonably accurate APNIC assignment reference? (Score:2)
Is there one?
Re:IPTables really helps. (Score:3, Interesting)
My company tried blocking China and Korea and we were almost immediately threatened with lawsuits (from our internal users) because we were discriminating against an entire country.
I hate to admit it, but the users probably were correct in their complaints.
Quite honestly, I hope they choke on all that spam.
Re:IPTables really helps. (Score:2, Interesting)
And the quest continues.
Its frustrating sometimes... (Score:2)
Re:What's more frustrating (Score:2)
I think the issue is... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, the spammer scum (I know, don't need to add scum, spammer covers it) figure that it's a law for show, which it is..
The top 10 spammers are responsible for something like 3 quarters of the spam sent. If Only half of those spammers were locked up in jail (where you have to admit they belong, because of their tactics, never mind the UCE itself).. spam would drop noticeably.
The law needs to be improved. The law needs to have teeth.. and the law needs to chew some big time spammers.
That's the only thing that'll slow things down.
Missing the point (Score:2)
As a user and a domain owner, the overall volume of spam isn't of particular concern for me. (Obviously ISPs and carriers have different priorities.) If CAN-SPAM succeeds even partially in demanding filterable subjects and outlawing address forgeries, that's far more important to me than whether the total volume goes up or down.
Saw this on Usenet (Score:5, Interesting)
Allow me to set forth a number of propositions:
1) Spam is now 60% or more of all email in the world, and increasing monthly.
2) The lost productivity costs to industry of dealing with spam is estimated to be from $10 billion to $20 billion yearly.
3) There are about 100 to 200 spammers behind 90% of the world's spam.
4) Thus each spammer can be estimated to cost industry globally around $100 million dollars.
5) The EPA and DOT value a human life at between $3 million and $7 million dollars.
6) Many people in the United States are underinsured medically. Some of them need expensive medical care they cannot afford, and therefore die as a result. Call the affordability threshold $100,000 to $1,000,000. If major ISPs and corporations could be ironbound to honour their word, admittedly no small task, then one could posit a regime where:
a) The leading 1000 connectivity consumers place half their antispam spending in escrow
b) Guido the Fish and Two Finger Tony get hired to smoke the top 100 spam offenders, reducing the need for antispam spending worldwide, and freeing the cash for:
c) The escrowed funds then get used to save a large number of lives who would otherwise be lost due to pricy medical care.
At this point, one must ask: What is a spammer's life worth? The economics of the situation means more people get saved than spammers blown away, therefore the sum total is that a greater good is served by the above scheme as more people survive with a higher quality of life than the status quo ante.
Yeah, The Feds Really Have the Answer (Score:2)
Correlation, not causation (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it's the law (Score:2)
It's just the more spam they send, the less likely people are likely to respond, the better spam filters are developed, the more spam they have to send to make money... This will reach a peak and wink out because there would be just no way to make money. Did you see a door-to-door
Global Cost of Spam (Score:2, Interesting)
How can this be? Spam is a pain in the ass when I have spend 1 minute a month checking/deleting the contents of my spam inbox, but I don't see how it costs that much money. Yes, I know time is money and even 1 minute of my time is probably worth something, but I just can't see it adding up to 50 billion. I can see companies purchasing spam blocking software, but again, not 50 bil
Fraud enforcement is the key, not spam enforcement (Score:2)
As long as you led criminals operate, they'll continue to break the spam laws.
right... (Score:2)
Law of Unintended Consequences (Score:3, Interesting)
Just keep that in mind when worrying about DMCA, etc.
Imagine a world where tools like PGP become more and more successful because the corporate/government oppressors are trying to get more control.
Technologists just want to be free.
That's more than double (Score:2)
If non-spam has increased, than spam has increased further by that. Suppose non-spam has doubled, then spam would have increased by a whopping 533%. blah blah
resources are out there... (Score:5, Insightful)
They say that spam accounts for so much lost productivity, but they fail to mention that spam has spawned a whole new race of products and services that keep people employed. The Anti-Spam industry is thriving and contributing to world economic growth. As with everything, spam may be a nuisance, but it does have its benefits. As usual, regular users are caught in the crossfire.
Re:resources are out there... (Score:4, Informative)
That's like saying crime is good becuase it keeps cops employed, or that terrorism is good because it keeps the military employed. The point that is missing, is that the net cost of crime, terrorism, and spam typically is greater than the economics of the industries spawned to combat them.
Yeah, I know, comparing spam to terrorism is a bit of a stretch, but I think the point is valid.
Re:resources are out there... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org].
It probably hasn't pushed up overall employment, at best it has employed software engineers instead of other forms of employment, and the end users have lost out with what else they could have bought with that money.
I said it once.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Spam isn't necessarily bad. It does have a use. If over-aggressive surveilance is something you fear, the camoflage that spam offers should be a comfort.
Think of all the spam you receive at work that slips past the filters- do you really think that corporate security has the time to manually filter everything else for the inappropriate emails your girlfriend keeps sending?
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to think about the implications that stegonography presents.
As Paul Vixie once said: (Score:3, Interesting)
The internet has no government, no constitution, no laws, no
rights, no police, no courts. Don't talk about fairness or
innocence, and don't talk about what should be done. Instead,
talk about what is being done and what will be done by the
amorphous unreachable undefinable blob called "the internet
user base." -Paul Vixie
Hosting Costs (Score:3, Informative)
Running up their hosting costs is an effective means of reducing spam.
Re:Can-Span (Score:2)
Re:Can-Span (Score:2)
Re:What a lot of people are forgetting... (Score:3, Funny)
The repentant ones could, instead of actually filling potholes, be permitted to shovel asphalt into them.