Is CAN SPAM Effective?

Recently FBI agent Thomas Grasso of the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, spoke at the Security Standard conference in Chicago. He said the FBI considers the CAN SPAM Act to be an effective tool in combating spam on the internet. He went on to say that even though a lot of spam originates outside of the U.S. our law enforcement agencies are now getting more cooperation from international law enforcement agencies.

Perhaps more cooperation is a key reason here as nobody saw the CAN SPAM Act as a silver bullet. It does help the prosecution of offenders in the U.S. but seems to be doing little to reduce spam in my in-box.

"There's a lot that's changed over the last 10 years," Grasso said. "It used to be if you trace an IP address back to Romania, you're not going to get somewhere with it. That's changed; we now have task forces working with these people overseas, and Eastern European police forces are aggressively going after this, because the problem is starting to affect them, too."

As to advice, Grosso was asked how Netizens should protect themselves. He said the cybercrimnals are getting through the firewalls and malware is being installed. "You need security solutions to be more comprehensive; you need to shore up the perimeter, but you need to worry about what's going on inside the network, too." And based on many press articles of late I'd agree. One recent survey showed many users felt they could connect any where and security was ITs job. That is a philosophy leading to failure. Security is everyone's job, from not sending confidential data through the wireless network at your local coffee shop to not using links from email sent to you by strangers.