Can-Spam Increased Spam

andy1307 writes "According to New York Times, spam has actually gone up [Free registration required. You gave real info, right?] since the CAN-SPAM act went into effect. There is a graphic in the article that illustrates this increase. Before the CAN-SPAM act was passed, spam was about 60% of all e-mail traffic. Now it's 80%. In a we-told-you-so quote, Steve Linford, the founder of the Spamhaus Project, says CAN-SPAM legalized spam by giving bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed certain rules. Slashdot covered this story last year. For companies that offer offshore "bulk advertising" servers, business is booming. A survey from Stanford University estimates the global cost of spam in terms of lost productivity to be at 50 billion $ and 17 billion $ in the US alone. CAN-SPAM does give prosecutors some leverage to go after the merchants - but it must be proved that they knew, or should have known, that their wares were being fed into the illegal spam chain. " The BBC has a related story talking about rates of spam, viruses, and scam mail.

Comments

IPTables really helps.

[PornMaster]

Just blocking China and Korean IP space from connecting to port 25 does wonders for reducing spam. See: http://www.okean.com/iptables/rc.firewall.sinokore a

Re:Correlation != Causality

[paulzeye]

Actually, the article mentioned that there could be other reasons for the increase in spam. One example was filters blocking more spam, and spammers needing to send out more spam to maintain their levels. The article wasn't bad, you should try reading it.