'Technology our only hope of cutting spam'

News from the 'war room' is sounding bleak for proponents of legislation and regulation as a plausible cure to spam email, with the UK's Information Commissioner all but admitting technology is now our only hope.

The latest news follows comments earlier this year when the Information Commissioner suggested government was simply too busy to address the problem.

Many anti-spam experts have long suggested technology is the only realistic weapon to block spam and remove the financial incentive to send it but the government, forced by a weight of public and industry pressure, has tried a number of failed, or bungled initiatives to combat the problem.

A spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) told silicon.com: "Richard Thomas [the Information Commissioner] has made it clear that it is very difficult to stop spam. If we can see where it is coming from and we have powers to act then we can do something but the actual number of cases where that has actually happened is miniscule."

She said the sheer volume of spam originating from overseas, predominantly from the US, means it is almost impossible for the UK to legislate against the problem, despite positive noises being made by cross border initiatives such as the London Action Plan on Spam.

However, contrary to other media reports, the ICO spokeswoman said Thomas' official line still remains that the fight will continue, albeit "with very huge odds against us".

As such technology now presents the most credible solution to reducing levels of spam, generated by a handful of individuals who have taken measures to protect their operations from the law.

Mark Sunner, CTO of MessageLabs, told silicon.com: "Legislation will have little or no effect on the hardcore spammers."

"These guys will continue to flout the law whilst hiding behind bot-nets and other stealth measures," said Sunner adding that such technological means for sending spam, distributed globally, will account for more than 80 per cent of spam.

"A technical solution really is the only way to tackle this problem," he added.

Speaking in June 2003, Enrique Salem, then CEO of Brightmail, now SVP security products at Symantec, told silicon.com he believed spam would die out within three years.

At the time Salem said: "While I don't think we will ever see spam disappear I think it will drop so low as to be a non-issue. I expect to see levels of spam falling through 2004, 2005 and by 2006 I expect to see spam levels probably sub-five per cent of email traffic."

But with the clock ticking on that prediction, and some of the specifics exposed with hindsight as wildly optimistic, Salem now is quick to defend his original claims.

Salem told silicon.com those individuals and companies with adequate protection in place are now seeing those low levels of spam as predicted. He argued that if everybody put their faith in a proven anti-spam solution then the overall levels would continue to decline.

Those who have left it to the government to crack down on the problem are seeing levels which are considerably higher, with many users still seeing spam make up more than 50 per cent of all email in their inbox. At the network level the figure is believed to be even higher at around 75 to 90 per cent.