CAN-SPAM Law Violated in 90% of Spam Sent This
Weekend
According to InBoxer Study
BOXBOROUGH, Mass. (PRNEWSWIRE) January 12,
2004 — CAN-SPAM,
the law that was supposed to reduce clutter caused by junk email, had
little effect on the nation’s inboxes this weekend, according
to a study completed by InBoxer, Inc., the makes of InBoxer antispam
filters. Only 10% of all the spam analyzed contained an email address,
relevant subject line, a physical address, and the unsubscribe information
required by the law that went into effect on January 1.
Audiotrieve collected email messages using so-called "honey pot" accounts
on January 10th and 11th. We analyzed 1000 of these junk e-mail messages.
Honey-pot accounts are email accounts designed to attract spam, but
are not in use by any individual. Therefore, none of the messages received
by these accounts were intended to be sent to a known person.
Only 102 of the 1000 messages analyzed contained all of the information
required by CAN-SPAM. While all the elements appeared in these 102
messages, Audiotrieve did not try to verify that the physical addresses
were correct or whether taking the action required to unsubscribe would
work. More of the contact addresses were located in Southern Florida
and Orange County, California than from any other locations. The international
addresses were from Vancouver, Canada, Bermuda and the West Indies.
While these messages contained all kinds of pitches, none were pornographic
in nature.
Physical addresses were missing from all of the remaining 898 spam
messages. While about one-third had unsubscribe links, Audiotrieve
advises against using them because unscrupulous spammers may use the
response as confirmation that an email address is valid and will add
the address to even more lists.
"Unfortunately, CAN-SPAM doesn't can spam. Companies that
already act at the margins of the law seem to also ignore these new
regulations," said
Roger Matus, Chief Executive of Audiotrieve, the makers of InBoxer
antispam filters.
A 21 day free trial of InBoxer is available from http://www.inboxer.com.
InBoxer’s costs $39.95.
About Audiotrieve and InBoxer
InBoxer, Inc. (www.audiotrieve.com, www.inboxer.com) creates products
and services that sort, index and retrieve information that cannot
be found easily using traditional means. InBoxer separates the email
users want from the email they don’t. INBOXER is a trademark
and AUDIOTRIEVE is a U.S. registered trademark of InBoxer, Inc.. All other marks
are property of their respective owners.
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