BusinessWeek has a great article about the FTC and how they’ve evolved to become a fixture in the war against spam and online fraud. They have a server that holds over 314 million spam messages and receives over 200,000 more a day. Investigators analyze the messages in their efforts to track down spammers and prosecute them under the CAN-SPAM law. Successful investigations lead to spammers being fined and sometimes jailed. They’ve also begun moving into the areas of social networking and identity theft.
I wonder though, of all the spam messages they collect what percentage originates from somewhere other than the U.S. Most hardcore spamming operations are safely overseas on bullet proof hosts in countries that don’t investigate or prosecute cybercrime either due to lack of understanding, lack of resources, or law enforcement corruption. Since these spammers can be convicted and fined without having to actually appear in court, yet can’t be made to pay up unless they enter the U.S., it seems such investigations could all be done in vain. Suing spammers doesn’t work well either – they just declare bankruptcy and move on to a new scam. There have been a few cases lately about spammers who’ve gotten themselves pretty hefty jail sentences but again, it doesn’t really work when the spammer is overseas somewhere.
So yes, the FTC is doing a great thing by investigating spammers and holding them accountable under the CAN-SPAM Act, but fighting spam will only be truly effective when all countries do so together and have similar anti-spam laws.



Could your business become financially liable for spam that comes from your network? It might sound far-fetched, but it could one day become reality.
Anti-spam technology encompasses a lot of different practices, techniques, and systems for detecting and blocking spam emails. Customers sometimes look for a turnkey, push button, set and forget anti-spam solution that will “just work”.
The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) has
A research team from two Californian universities has developed what it believes will be a
British ISPs have 
NBC Chicago published a 