Fergie's Tech Blog

Can-Spam Law 'Big Disappointment'

Gregg Keizer writes on InformationWeek:

As the federal Can-Spam Act nears its third anniversary, a spam researcher calls it a "big disappointment" and says it hasn't been a deterrent to junk e-mailers, who have stepped up their efforts in the last few months to flood inboxes with an unprecedented volume of spam.

"Can-Spam has provided more prosecutorial teeth, but it hasn't had a huge deterrent effect," says Scott Chasin, the chief technology officer of MX Logic. "It's been a fairly big disappointment."

To be fair, Chasin says, Can-Spam was never meant to stop spam, only regulate it. But even at that job, the law has been a dismal failure. According to MX Logic's data, no more than 7% of all spam was ever compliant with the legislation's requirements. And that was within the act's first year. This year, compliance ran at all-time lows, never once reaching 1%.

"It's just another reminder that the legislative leg is not having a lot of impact," Chasin says.

posted by Fergie @ 12/28/2006 01:32:00 PM