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Spammers undeterred by Can-Spam Act

Paul Festa CNET News

Published: 30 Dec 2004 10:30 GMT

Nearly a year after its passage, the federal Can-Spam law has done little to curb spam, according to a year-end report due on Monday.

MX Logic, an anti-spam company, said its surveys for the year showed widespread and flagrant disregard for the US law that went into effect on 1 January.

"The Can-Spam law has been in place for a year now, and according to our studies we've seen very little compliance," said Scott Chasin, chief technology officer of MX Logic in Denver. "The real benefit of Can-Spam is to the service providers, giving them the ability to go after those who send spam."

Large Internet service providers have indeed used the law to file suits against spammers. Microsoft this month filed seven suits alleging Can-Spam violations.

Can-Spam regulated how people and organisations could send unsolicited commercial email, but 97 percent of such email sent this year violated the law, according to MX Logic.

Spam made up 77 percent of email traffic as a whole over the course of the year, MX Logic said. That's not even as bad as anti-spam company Postini's estimate that legitimate email plummeted to 12 percent from 22 percent of email traffic in 2004.

Despite the federal law, the US dwarfed its nearest rival, South Korea, in being the origin of 42 percent of all spam this year.