Spam proliferates despite year-old CAN-SPAM Act

The company reported that about 97 percent of unsolicited commercial email over the past year did not comply with the federal anti-spam law.

"While we applaud the intent of the CAN-SPAM Act, clearly it has had no meaningful impact on the unrelenting flow of spam that continues to clog the internet and plague inboxes," Scott Chasin, MX Logic CTO, said in a prepared statement.

Spam accounted for 77 percent of all email traffic handled by MX Logic last year.

The company measured compliance with CAN-SPAM each month by studying a random sample of 10,000 unsolicited commercial emails on a weekly basis. Last year, compliance ranged from a low of 0.54 percent in July to a high of seven percent last month.

On the positive side, CAN-SPAM provides enforcement capabilities and has been used, along with state anti-spam laws, to pursue prosecution and civil lawsuits against spammers, according to MX Logic.

Last month, Sophos released a study that showed the U.S. to be the top spamming country. The U.S. was responsible for exporting 42 percent of all spam last year, followed by South Korea, which sent 13.4 percent.

www.mxlogic.com
www.sophos.com