Washed Up Or Not, Porn Spammers Are Ignoring New Rules

from the gee,-what-a-surprise dept

When the FTC first announced that all porn spam would need to be labeled with "sexually explicit" in the subject line, we noted that they were now legalizing porn spam and that we should expect plenty of it. A new study shows that not only has the amount of porn spam increased since that rule went into effect, most porn spammers are ignoring the law in one way or another. It looks like many did try to put "sexually explicit" or some related misspelling in the subject line, but then ignored just about every other part of the law (such as no spoofing of the from address). Of course, it was just Monday that we pointed out that porn spam was fading as an overall percentage of spam. However, that should give you an idea of how much overall spam is increasing. While the absolute number of porn spam messages has jumped, the relative percentage in relation to financial and other spam messages is decreasing. And, to think, our politicians told us that by now we'd be living in a post-spam world thanks to CAN SPAM.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Test, 26 May 2004 @ 1:33pm

    Porn Spam

    If porn spam contains the words "sexually explicit" I can filter it out. The fact that it is legal is irrelevant. Congress has given everyone a way to filter out porn spam which is what we all wanted.

    The fact the porn spammers are now breaking the law means they can be arrested, even jailed. Do not blame Congress that people break the law. Compress did a good job.

    If Congress banned porn spam the law would be struck down. This is a good law. It does exactly what the people want. Block porn spam from their inbox. As a bonus a few porn spammers will go to jail. What else do you want?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      thecaptain, 27 May 2004 @ 7:51am

      Re: Porn Spam

      The facts are:

      1) Porn spammers largely will(and do) ignore this law complete, this only is in effet in the US. It has no teeth. In that sense, it did NOT do a good job.

      2) Even *IF* a US spammer doesn't want to run afoul of the law, he can (and MANY do) simply alter the spelling of "sexually explicit" by any number of means:

      S E X V A L L Y 3XPL1C1T

      or

      s 3 X U A 7 7 Y E X PLI CIT

      or any of thousands of other options

      And while its easily read, and complies with the law...it can't easily be filtered out (unless you spend time making a ruleset which handles all the combos AND the special characters possible). In THAT sense, it also did not do a good job.

      This is simply a useless piece of legislation to make people feel that they are doing something but with very little actual effect on the problem.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.