You can spam if you want to. That's how most spammers seem to be interpreting the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Only 1 percent of the unsolicited e-mail messages circulating on the Internet last month complied with the new law, despite several high-profile cases against spammers. The figure marks a drop from a compliance rate of 3 percent during the first four months of the year.
The CAN-SPAM Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2004, bans e-mail marketers from using false e-mail addresses or names, and requires that their subject lines signal the content of the message and include links allowing recipients to opt out of future mailings. Violators can be sent to prison for up to five years and sued for as much as $6 million.
An executive at MX Logic, the anti-spam company that conducted the study, said she was not sure why compliance had dropped. She speculated that two factors may be at work: a growing volume of spam from foreign sources and the failure of U.S. spammers to take the law seriously.
Other anti-spam companies are witnessing a similar trend. Postini Inc. officials said that spammers have boosted their e-mail volume to counter better filtering software. Postini, which scans 1.4 billion e-mails each week, reported that spam has accounted for nearly four out of five e-mails at any given time since January.
Significance: Although spammers may seem unperturbed by anti-spam laws, Internet marketers are well-advised to comply with the law, and ensure that any third-party services they use do so as well, since frustrated enforcement agents and Internet servers may not necessarily distinguish between spammers and legitimate.