Posted: 09th Jan, 2004 By: MarkJ
ISP AOL has claimed that the new USA and UK anti-SPAM (junk e-mail) laws have so far failed to stem the tide (surprised? NO) and could even be making matters worse:
Meanwhile AOL said it blocked nearly 500 billion spam messages in 2003, but Spamhaus founder Steve Linford warned that junk mail will increase in 2004 and blamed the new legislation, which is "full of loopholes".
"The UK directive is effectively useless as it will do nothing to stop spam to companies," he said. "Because it will take the Information Commissioner at least 80 days to force a spammer to take an individual off his list before a £5,000 fine can be levied, this has actively encouraged more spammers to set up in the UK who will target businesses as well.
Although Can Spam has some good points, such as the legal penalties against spammers, it basically says spammers can spam. Because the law is opt-out, spammers are already talking about suing Spamhaus and Internet Service Providers for blocking and filtering their emails," he said.That last bit is incredibly shocking and AOLs point has also been echoed by others.
So, will the government react in time to prevent things getting worse? Probably not. More @
VNUNet.