Spam showing little sign of abating

Two factors are combining to ensure that combating spam will continue to be a near-impossible task - the fact that companies are happy to continue flouting anti-spam legislation and the fact that a lack of education among end users is set to keep aggravating the issue.

However, blame for the latter issue can hardly be laid at the feet of employees when 57 per cent of companies are failing to communicate their policy relating to unsolicited email, according to mail-filtering firm Clearswift.

To give some idea of the extent of the problem - spammers, who require a response rate of about one in one million emails, appear to be striking a chord with less tech-savvy UK workers.

Alyn Hockey, director of research at Clearswift, said: "The recent MyDoom email virus confirmed for the security industry the lack of awareness about opening spam email attachments, with too many people being tricked into opening the virus."

Furthermore, according to Clearswift's research 22 per cent of respondents knew employees who had responded to a spam offer while only seven per cent of companies said they had disciplined staff for doing just that - even though replying to spam is often an open invite to spammers to send more.

A breakdown in communication with the IT department is also an issue. In 65 per cent of companies, less than a quarter of staff will report spam emails - a process that is often vital in correctly configuring spam filters to keep pace with the evolution of spam tactics.

The part played even by 'legitimate' marketing companies in the spam problem also shows little sign of lessening the deluge.

According to Jupiter Research, US marketers are still not complying fully with new laws designed to stop spam.

Although a majority of the companies tracked provide ways for recipients to opt out of email mailing lists, as required by the federal Can-Spam Act, nearly a quarter of them continued to send email messages to recipients who had submitted requests to unsubscribe, according to the report, which was released this week.

The law requires marketers to reconcile their mailing lists once a week, based on feedback from opt-out requests, but a quarter of marketers indicated that they delete email addresses on a monthly basis, quarterly or never. Many companies even stated in email footers that they could not comply with the law's 10-day standard.

Jupiter Research tracked 55 leading email marketers in sectors such as retail, travel, media and financial services. The Can-Spam Act, short for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing, establishes nationwide standards for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail. It was enacted in December.

Dinesh C. Sharma writes for ZDNet