Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Spam Levels - Up? Down? You Be the Judge
spamfighter writes "Survey firm Ipsos-Reid has taken the interesting stance that spam to Canadians has been attenuated by 20% because of the federal privacy law PIPEDA which is so fearsome in nature that is scares off even the biggest- baddest spammers in other countries. CAUCE Canada has their doubts."
While numbers can be deceiving, I do believe tougher law will prevent crimes.
Case in point: The War on Drugs
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I work in the IT field for a large Canadian company. The amount of spam we get is slowly but steady increasing. Currently somewhere around 98% of all the mail we get is "Junk" (spam, invalid recipients, improper smtp protocol, etc). Looking at our mail server graphs shows a definite upward trend in both overall "Junk" and confirmed spam.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
The law is tough, and becoming tougher, because we do not yet know how to effectively identify and prosecute the offenders.
Spammers (as a generalisation), do it for financial reward. Negative reward is applied in the form of laws against spam. However, the chance of being caught is so low, that this is no real disincentive. Thus, in order to make it not worthwhile to spam, we have to either
Eventually, a rational spammer will decide that penalty×prob_penalty_being_applied > profit, and will give up.
Since prob_penalty_being_applied is currently so low, the tempation is to make penalty very high.
But that has its own risks. Remember, you might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Draconian penalties usually result in offenders who 'shoot back'. A spammer facing 25 years as a guest of the authorities, might just be willing to take fairly extreme methods to avoid prosecution.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
I have an e-mail address that ends in .ac.uk (UK academic), and still most of my spam is for offers that only apply to the US (pills from Canadian pharmacies being the most popular at the moment, it seems). That, and a lot of offers of a degree, which I really wouldn't expect if these were targetted (nearly everyone with a .ac.uk address either has a degree, or is working on getting a real degree).
As such, I find it very hard to believe they're avoiding spamming Canadians.
The war on drugs analogy doesnt work as it essentially targets 99% of the population at one time or the other.
While I don't mean to be a prick, I have to disagree with you on the issue of most people having done drugs. Out of my peers, none of us have done illegal drugs once. Now, I am in a religiously conservative area, but to say that most is flat wrong. It may be according to your world view, but for most I would say they haven't.
However, I agree with you on the scope of the legislation. Since there is a smaller group of people doing spamming than doing drugs, it does help. But you also have to take into account the fact that drug groups are specifically designed, organized and have become effective at avoiding law enforcment. Spammers on the other hand, are a whole lot easier to catch -- there are ways to detect where the spam is comming from and gather evidence is easier (there is only a limited way that spam can get into a country, where there are thousands of ways that drugs can find their way into a country). But to compare the two is like comparing apples and organges.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Not only "most," but 99%! That's a hell of a statement. And apparently despite the crippling hyperbole and absolutely no hard facts to back it up, he's +5.
I remember a couple of years ago holding many /. posters' opinions in awe. They seemed so well thought-out and reasonable. Now I see the moderation system works based on group-think. I wonder if I've grown up or slashdot has really degenerated that far. Live and learn I guess, either way.
Mod offtopic as you wish.
Have you ever carried a prescription drug into a public school and never reported it to the administration? Have you ever taken a claritin or some other prescription drug from a friend? Have you ever seen drug use and not reported it to the authorities?
Drug laws and "the war on drugs" is not just about taking drugs, there's a whole messy body of law both on the federal and state level that turns most people into criminals (if caught and prosecuted).
I guess you could probably say that for everybody. I'm not Canadian, so I'm not sure this statistic would apply, but 99.2% of the spam I get here in Australia originates from the US.
Obviously it is not possible or practicable for me to "go after" a spammer in another country, and I'm sure they are perfectly aware of that, and count on it. In a frontierless world such as the internet, laws such as this are only effective if every nation has and enforces them.
Otherwise, perhaps a few public, painful and messy executions would probably be a more effective deterrent.
I don't claim to be an expert on this, but I'd have to say there's a few good reasons for this.
.com, .net, .org. Instead they use .ca and I would guess the .de (Germans) folks get comparable amounts of spam when compared to the US for the same reason.
1. Canadians Internet users, on average, are probably a bit more tech-savvy than USians, meaning they have a lower response rate than Americans. (See NOTE, below)
2. Canadians with email addresses don't always use
3. Canadians probably don't report spam as often. Basically, they may receive the same amounts, but they aren't surveyed as often as USians on how much they hate spam.
NOTE: I don't want to offend anyone by saying Canadians are smarter on average (esp. since I'm not Canadian myself!), but you have to keep in mind the sheer number of USians that have email addresses compared to those in Canada.
In the US, everyone and their dog has an email address and webpage. In Canada, I find it hard to believe that Ma and Pa Smith have email addresses, or, if they do, at no higher a rate than Ma and Pa Smith in the US Midwest.
Maybe "average" isn't as good a word as "median", too.