The “Effectiveness and Enforcement of the Can-Spam Act” report says that even though nearly three-quarters of the world’s email is unsolicited, that number has been on the decline since the Act was passed two years ago.
“One particularly significant development since the enactment of Can-Spam is that the volume of spam has begun to decrease,” the report says. “MX Logic, an email filtering company, reported that during the first eight months of 2005, spam accounted for 67 percent of email passing through its system, a nine percent decrease from the same period one year earlier.”
The report also claims that several ISPs, including America Online, saw spam production decline even further, with AOL users reporting 75 percent less spam in 2004 than they did in 2003.
While the FTC report claims the Can-Spam Act was central to this decline, FTC officials admit that filtering technology has improved during the same period, which may account for much of the drop.
“I think it's difficult to parse out the effectiveness of the law versus the technological advances in reducing spam,” Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said.
The report also warns that spam has grown “increasingly malicious,” with stark growth reported in spam messages that also contain malware and other harmful applications, as well as an increasingly complexity in how businesses using spam operate.
“In addition to modifying the content of their messages, spammers also have sought to frustrate law enforcement by using increasingly complex multi-layered business arrangements,” the report says.
To step up anti-spam efforts, Parnes said domain name registrars needed to increase measures in the fight against fake domain registrations, as well as boost consumer education.
The report, however, was less diplomatic.
“The appreciable inaccuracy of data in domain name registrars’ Whois databases and registrars’ failure to take reasonable measures to verify the accuracy of information submitted by registrants continue to hamper law enforcement,” the report says.
Also at issue is whether spam really has declined at all. Despite the fact that the FTC reported a drop, the increase in overall email production in the last two years may in fact mean the number of spam messages worldwide has increased.
“We would not make the statement today that spam has completely declined,” MX Logic CTO Scott Chasin said. “What we can say, and what we believe, is that spam has declined as far as reaching the consumer's inbox. I think it's a big difference from saying overall spam volumes are down.”
Chasin’s statements are in line with a number of studies from metrics firms like Sophos and security firm Cloudmark, which released reports earlier this year claming spam was on the rise upwards of 60 percent from 2004 but that security measures, largely the work of ISPs, meant less spam reached its intended victim.
The reports also highlighted the explosion of spam in countries like China and South Korea, where the Internet is still in its infancy.
Of particular note to adult businesses, an MX Logic report says only three percent of “legitimate commercial emailers” were found to comply with Can-Spam regulations, which require all adult-oriented email to feature the words “SEXUALLY EXPLICIT” in the subject line.
