Nigerian widows celebrate first anniversary of US anti-spam act

This headline from Good Morning, Silicon Valley reminds me that it’s a year since the US anti-spam act came into force. And guess what? Spam has increased substantially since its passage. “Since the Can Spam Act went into effect in January 2004, unsolicited junk e-mail on the Internet has come to total perhaps 80 percent or more of all e-mail sent, according to most measures. That is up from 50 percent to 60 percent of all e-mail before the law went into effect.”

To some antispam crusaders, the surge comes as no surprise. They had long argued that the law would make the spam problem worse by effectively giving bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed certain rules.”