“In the short term, the effect it’s going to have is more symbolic more than anything else,” John Levine, co-author of "Fighting Spam for Dummies" told the Associated Press. “Soloway is a large spammer, but hardly the only large spammer.”
Adam Swidler, senior manager of solutions marketing for email security firm Postini, concurred with Levine, and termed Soloway’s arrest as “more of a media event than a real impact on the traffic of spam.”
Experts say that one reason why spam will continue to flow despite Soloway’s arrest is that other spammers have actually overtaken the Spam King in recent years. Once listed as among the top 10 spammers in the world by Spamhaus, Soloway is now merely one of the 135 most prolific spammers according to the spam watchdog group.
“Most of the Russian gangs seem to have a lot more freshly hijacked computers and are able to deliver much more spam into people’s inboxes,” said Spamhaus investigator Vincent Hanna, according to TimesOnline. “The stuff that Robert Soloway had under this control, let’s call it ‘second grade.’”
One antispam activist compared the law enforcement challenge of tackling spam to the situation faced by the federal government when they target organized crime figures.
“It’s not that different from the Mafia,” said Anne Mitchell, director of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy. “Many times the feds grab a high-ranking don but the Mafia didn’t go away. Someone’s going to step up and fill his void.”
Other email experts asserted that whatever the immediate or long-term impact of Soloway’s arrest, it is a positive development for email users, and sends a strong message to other spammers.
“This is a great day for the Internet,” said Patrick Peterson, vice president of technology for security firm IronPort Systems. “Certainly, every spammer in the U.S. had better think twice about staying in the business.”
