Simon Moores is unconvinced that government legislation
will be an effective weapon in the fight against spam.
Spam is getting worse. The number of junk mail messages
I receive every day has almost doubled since I last wrote about the
problem inApril.
Anti-spam technology company Brightmail has estimated that the
problem has increased by as much as 400% in the past year costing
businesses worldwide around £5.5bn, or marginally more than the
cost to the taxpayer of a successful bid to host the 2012
Olympics.
I recently discovered that having my e-mail address on a company
website is a very bad idea. There’s a whole industry devoted to
harvesting addresses from the web, and one piece of research has
demonstrated that six decoy e-mail addresses attracted 8,500 pieces
of spam in six months alone.
The Americans are even considering an anti-spam treaty, although
I wonder how effective this might be. Both AOL and Microsoft are
pushing for much harsher penalties for marketing companies that
breach existing legislation.
In the US, The Federal Trade Commission has witnessed an
explosion in the number of complaints it receives from consumers
about spam. In 2001, around 10,000 junk e-mails each day were
forwarded to its staff from unhappy internet users.
This figure now stands closer to 130,000, and such is the
frustration at being unable to prevent the seemingly inexhaustible
growth in illicit direct e-mail that even the most moderate voices
in the US government are starting to suggest harsher penalties.
Last week, I received advanced notification of the UK’s first
"spam summit", which illustrates the concern of our own MPs, led by
Labour’s Derek Wyatt. I don’t, however, believe that even with EU
legislation, we can do much more against this menace, short of
rigorously filtering every piece of e-mail that comes into the
country.
Other than talking about the problem and imposing harsh
penalties on companies that choose to ignore the legislation, I’m
not sure what we can do to shut down the 40 or so major businesses
that hide in the Far East. We can be as outraged as we like, but
that’s not going to stop a highly lucrative business succeeding in
a legislative environment which turns a blind eye on international
treaties.
So we have a choice. We insist that ISPs install anti-spam
filters, which most of them are doing, and on our own mail servers
and PCs we install software like V@nquish, a product that I’ve just
been sent from the US, which sounds like a washing powder but
promises "A radical approach" to the problem. We’ll see.
All we can do is hope that tighter legislation in Europe and the
United States will reduce some of the background noise and remove
the likes of the mail I received earlier from
GenerateMoreVisitors052203@excite.com that asks: "Would you like to
have your message seen by over 15.6 million opt-in targeted people
daily"?
Opting in to an e-mail list is rather like opting in to
taxation. There’s no way to opt out out from either.
What do you think?
Do you think tighter legislation will deter spammers?
Tell us in an e-mail >> ComputerWeekly.com
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Setting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of leading industry analystDr Simon
Mooresof Zentelligence.
Acting globally, Zentelligence (Research) advises
governments, suppliers, business and the media on the evolution,
application and delivery of leading-edge technologies and
specialises in the areas of eGovernment and information
security.
For further information on Zentelligence and its research,
presentation and analyst services visitwww.zentelligence.com