[IP] Inbox Trauma: New Anti-Spam Tools Falter

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Claudio Gutierrez <cgutierrez@improvement.cl>
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:56:04 
To:Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Inbox Trauma: New Anti-Spam Tools Falter

Dave
	I think you have a first hand experience on this topic

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=530&e=2&u=/ap/20040111/ap_on_hi_te/swimming_in_spam
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer

NEW YORK - Software makers have spent millions of dollars developing new 
tools for battling spam, and a new federal anti-spam law went into 
effect on Jan. 1. So are our e-mail inboxes any less cluttered?

In the week since the law took effect, spam-filtering company Brightmail 
Inc. flagged 58 percent of incoming e-mail as spam, showing no change 
from December. And America Online Inc. saw a 10 percent jump in spam 
from overseas, possibly from spammers trying to evade U.S. law.

Some experts even believe the new law will actually bury us in even more 
electronic junk.

"Now we have a green light for what would come to be called `legal 
spam,'" said Vincent Schiavone, chief executive of the ePrivacy Group 
consultancy. By establishing official guidelines for what's permissible, 
"the federal law made unsolicited mail legal but no less unwanted."

Advances in filtering technology aren't eliminating spam, either, as 
spammers quickly develop smarter countermeasures such as constantly 
changing the wording in their messages.

As well, spammers have used computer viruses to create additional e-mail 
relay points even as Internet service companies shut down previously 
poisoned pathways.

Leslie Flynn, an administrative assistant for an investment banker, 
continues to get ads for Xanex, Valium and "things to make parts of your 
bodies bigger."

The new law doesn't actually ban pitches as long as senders meet various 
guidelines ? such as including an accurate subject line and the sender's 
real-world mail address. Recipients must also be offered a way to 
decline, or opt out of, future e-mailings.

<snip>





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