MX Logic Report: Compliance with Anti-Spam Law Increased to 6% in November

MX Logic, Inc. (www.mxlogic.com), a provider of innovative email defense solutions that ensure email protection and security for businesses, service providers, government organizations, resellers and their customers, reported today that 6 percent of unsolicited commercial email in November complied with the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act.

"Nearly a year after President Bush signed the CAN-SPAM Act, compliance remains marginal, while the overall volume of spam has increased steadily," said Scott Chasin, chief technology officer, MX Logic.

This represents the highest monthly compliance to date and an increase from 4 percent compliance in October. Seventy-five percent of all email traffic through the MX Logic Threat Center in November was spam.
"The CAN-SPAM Act might have deterred some part-time spammers," Chasin said. "However, our data indicate that the act has had little impact on sophisticated spammers, who continue to leverage networks of hijacked PCs, as well as other tools to disseminate unsolicited and often fraudulent email."

MX Logic also reported that within the last three weeks, a prime online holiday shopping period, spam sent through so-called zombie PCs climbed as high as 69 percent in a single day. Zombie PCs are neglected, "always-connected" broadband PCs that spammers hijack by installing a spam Trojan.

Once infected, these zombie PCs provide worm authors with remote command-and-control spam-distribution capabilities, allowing them to create a legion of zombie computers that can pump out unwanted email and initiate Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

MX Logic has measured CAN-SPAM compliance each month since the law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2004. Monthly compliance has ranged from a low of 0.54 percent in July to November's high of 6 percent. MX Logic tracks compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act by examining a random sample of 10,000 unsolicited commercial emails each week.