Representatives from the FTC will issue a report to Congress on Dec. 20 titled “Effectiveness and Enforcement of the Can-Spam Act,” which also will be released to the press at an FTC press conference.
During the conference, several federal and state law enforcement officials from both the U.S. and Canada, including several assistant U.S. Attorneys, members of the Canadian Competition Bureau and the Attorneys General of Florida, North Carolina and Texas, also are scheduled to unveil new initiatives that target illegal spam operations.
The FTC report on Can-Spam (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) will come almost exactly two months after security vendor Sophos PLC released a blistering report on spam production throughout the world, ranking the U.S. as the No. 1 global spam producer this year for the 7th year in a row.
Although spam production inside the U.S. has dropped significantly in the last year, from 41 percent of global spam production to 26 percent, the Sophos report concluded that the primary reason for the drop was due to growth of the Internet in other countries, specifically in South Korea and China, where the relative newness of the market lends itself to spam abuses.
“Anti-spam task forces and the authorities and the ISPs in North America are getting much better at putting into practice methods that are lowering the amount of spam,” Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said. “[But] the unfortunate truth is that spam is a lucrative global business, driven by criminal intent, and well beyond the ability of Can-Spam to control.”
The FTC press conference is scheduled for 7:30 a.m. PST.