Study Shows Federal Law to Block “Spam” Ineffective |
|
CONTACT: Mark Schirmer
FRANKFORT, KY (July 9, 2004) — A six-month study of
the impact of the federal CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of
Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act by the Kentucky Long-Term
Policy Research Center finds that, as predicted by critics, the law
has had little effect on the flow of unsolicited e-mail. In fact, the
study finds, one of its provisions appears to be having the reverse
effect: it increases the flow of unsolicited e-mail. Because 87
percent of Kentuckians have Internet access and electronic
communications have become central to business operations, the
findings are of particular importance.
Spam has become a vast underground international
business, generating as much as 67 percent of global e-mail activity
and 83 percent of all the e-mail sent in the United States. The
unsolicited advertising is mostly for pharmaceuticals, mortgages,
pornography, and an array of “miracle” products; but spam
has also become the method-of-choice for virus distribution. The sheer
volume of it is creating a drag on global productivity. The cost of
spam-filters and lost productivity attributed to this barrage of
online solicitations has been estimated at $10 billion in 2004, but
Microsoft’s Ryan Hamlin speculated that businesses could spend $18
billion this year alone just for filtering software and storage
hardware. For the study, researcher Mark Schirmer created
dummy addresses on selected state websites that were invisible to the
human eye but susceptible to being “harvested”
electronically by so-called spammers. Varying responses to the e-mails
showed, among other things, that the “opt-out” provision of
the law only served to increase the flow of spam. The study also yielded some important information
about how to curb the flow of spam. “Thus far, CAN-SPAM has not
proven to be effective as a legal deterrent, but our findings
highlight technological and common-sense approaches people,
businesses, and government agencies can take to cut down on the spam
they receive,” Schirmer said. “Until CAN-SPAM either
produces some high-profile convictions or is replaced with more
stringent legislation, computer users will need to take the kinds of
steps we outline. But realistically, spammers have proven to adapt
quickly, so it’s impossible to predict how long these strategies
will be effective.” At the end of the year, the Center plans a second
six-month update of the progress of the law’s impact on spam and the
efficacy of strategies employed to avoid it. |