CAN-SPAM not only isn't canning the spam swarm, it may well be provoking Netizens to can e-mail, at least to certain degrees, says a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
"The distress of Internet users at spam has increased in recent months," authors Lee Rainie and Deborah Fallows said in their March 17 report, "and growing numbers of Internet users are becoming disillusioned with e-mail, despite the first national anti-spam legislation which went into effect January 1."
The authors said 29 percent of e-mail users surveyed said they now use e-mail less because of spam, while 63 percent of those users surveyed said they trust e-mail less in general thanks to the spam swarm – the latter figure was up from 52 percent surveyed in June 2003; the former, up from 25 percent in the same 2003 period.
Almost more telling, according to the authors, a whopping 77 percent of surveyed e-mailers said the spam swarm "made the act of being online unpleasant and annoying," a jump from 70 percent last June. And almost half the total e-mail users surveyed told the Pew researchers they were aware of CAN-SPAM taking effect when 2004 began.
"The impact of the CAN-SPAM legislation is mixed but not very encouraging so far," Rainie and Fallows wrote. "The vast majority of e-mail users report no change in the volume of spam arriving in the in-boxes of either their personal or work-related accounts. A slightly larger percentage of e-mail users report their volume of incoming spam has actually increased rather than decreased since January 1.
The Pew survey showed that while an estimated 53 percent of those e-mailers surveyed said they saw no change in spam volume since CAN-SPAM took effect, 43 percent said they were getting more spam at home and work (24 percent at home, 19 percent at work) while only 31 percent said they were getting less spam in both places (20 percent at home, 11 percent at work). Only 21 percent told Pew they got no spam or didn't know if there had been any spam volume change – 3 percent about their personal e-mail and 18 percent about their work e-mail.
One adult Internet figure told AVN.com that she is getting a volume of spam comparable to what she received before CAN-SPAM took effect. "Except for the rush of spam and spoofing during the worm problem," she said, "I find I am receiving the same amount. It is still mainly about Viagra-like products, and then I receive 20-30 e-mails day with a file attachment that the e-mail tries to encourage me to open a virus-infested file."
One major problem, according to Rainie and Fallows: new evidence that spam remains sustainable as an industry, "because people continue to respond." The authors acknowledged some figures dropping somewhat since Pew's last survey on the subject, with 9 percent of the e-mailers surveyed saying they had responded to spam at one time or another "only to find it was phony or fraudulent."
A day after the Pew report was released, Nielsen//NetRatings issued a survey saying that almost three out of four people in the United States have home Internet access. And two federal lawmakers rolled out a new bill taking aim at one of the more notorious spam subjects: online pharmacies.
"Too many people are finding ways to obtain medications online without a valid prescription," said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Virginia), who co-authored the new bill with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California). The Davis-Waxman bill would ban domestic sites from writing and/or filling prescriptions without actually seeing patients, and give states authority to ask federal courts to help shut down cyberpharmacies based in other states, not to mention requiring pharmaceutical Websites to list names and other information for doctors and pharmacists.
