"Stop responding to spam" is the message behind a new
consumer awareness campaign launched by Australia's Internet
Industry Association (IIA).
The campaign is being supported by leading internet players
including Microsoft, Yahoo, America Online (AOL) and a number of
international consumer and privacy organisations.
Their goal is to raise awareness among consumers that by buying
goods from spammers they are helping to feed the problem.
"Only a fairly small number of people need to respond to spam to
make it worth the spammers' time," said Kaye Stearman, a
spokeswoman for Consumers International in the UK, which is
supporting the campaign.
"You only need a tiny, tiny response because the costs of
spending spam is minimal," Stearman said.
The awareness campaign is one of the first to focus on consumers
as contributors to the problem of unsolicited commercial e-mail,
which has been steadily on the rise, sparking widespread
frustration among e-mail users and internet service providers
(ISPs) alike.
The problem has become so serious that Californian governor Gray
Davis has signed a law earlier this week, which bans anyone from
sending unsolicited commercial e-mail to Californians' e-mail
addresses.
The antispam effort in California follows a number of other
regulations and technologies adopted worldwide in the hope of
reducing the amount of spam landing in inboxes.
Major e-mail providers, such as Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft have
expressed serious concern over spam. All three have introduced
tougher spam filters in recent months, as well as to protect their
own overwhelmed servers.
With the latest consumer campaign, the e-mail providers and
consumer groups hope that users themselves will become more savvy
about the role they play in stopping spam.
The IIA is promoting a "don't buy and don't reply" approach,
noting that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has estimated
that more than 70% of spam is fraudulent, misleading or
deceptive.
The group is launching a website at
www.spamcampaign.net next
week.
Scarlett Pruitt writes for IDG News Service