With all of the parts and clauses that make up the Can-Spam Act, it seemed like it was doing a good job at controlling spam, but not anymore. I think it would be safe to say that the spammers of the world are giving the Can-Spam Act the finger by dramatically increasing their spam distribution in the past few months. One report said that the volume of spam being distributed has increased by 76% in the past couple of months. This must be the reason why a spam researcher calls it a “big disappointment”.

As the federal Can-Spam Act nears its third anniversary, a spam researcher calls it a “big disappointment” and says it hasn’t been a deterrent to junk e-mailers, who have stepped up their efforts in the last few months to flood inboxes with an unprecedented volume of spam.”Can-Spam has provided more prosecutorial teeth, but it hasn’t had a huge deterrent effect,” says Scott Chasin, the chief technology officer of MX Logic. “It’s been a fairly big disappointment.”

To be fair, Chasin says, Can-Spam was never meant to stop spam, only regulate it. But even at that job, the law has been a dismal failure. According to MX Logic’s data, no more than 7% of all spam was ever compliant with the legislation’s requirements. And that was within the act’s first year. This year, compliance ran at all-time lows, never once reaching 1%.

“It’s just another reminder that the legislative leg is not having a lot of impact,” Chasin says.

Anti-spam researchers — Chasin included — have watched as spam volumes jumped in October, then soared again in November. Spammers haven’t looked back since. “[Spam] traffic has doubled or in some cases even quadrupled,” says Chasin. IronPort, an MX Logic rival in the e-mail security market, recently said that the amount of spam increased by 35% in November over October, and doubled in the 12 months ending in October 2006.[more]

Tags: Spam