CAN SPAM Act: An Empirical Analysis
Alex C. Kigerl · International journal of cyber criminology · 2009
IntroductionThe advancement of computing today has allowed human beings to automate many tasks that together make life easier. As technology continues to improve, more and more of our everyday activities are similarly improved, with better speed, ease, and functionality. Yet technology is a tool, the functionality of which can be given many different meanings. Technology together with information in this age is power, and power can be used for both good and ill.With new ways to exploit technology, the law has always been there to reign in the means by which criminals take advantage of changing tools. The law, like technology, is not static. But in this age science and technology have known an exponential improvement of accelerating returns, where newer inventions emerge faster than they did before. The legal system does not seem to have matched this speed.In the information age, knowledge is power. So too is the fraudulent representation of knowledge similarly powerful. Computers have given fraud new meaning, and new avenues to locate victims in the millions. The abuse of information to mislead is likely as old as language itself.The information technology highly suited to abuse by fraud is email, or spam, as email is the most efficient way to send literally billions of messages at the press of a button, without so much as a dime being spent to produce so many transmissions. And the high degree of anonymity of the sender of such messages makes getting away with perpetrating fraud by such means all the easier. The most common purpose of malware today is to send spam from millions of infected computers controlled by the cyber criminal (Schiller, Binkley, Harley, Evron, Bradley, & Willems, 2007).Spam is the sending of unsolicited electronic mail messages to multiple recipients, usually for commercial purposes. The sending of spam started small since its emergence in the 1990's (Kleiner, 2008), but like any technology, it has since grown. Spam is a multibillion dollar industry today (Kleiner, 2008) and is responsible for slowed internet traffic, wasted time and costly effort separating junk email from legitimate email, malware infections and spyware proliferation, stolen credit card and online account credentials, stolen identities, fraudulently sold commercial products and duped victims who are tricked into committing crimes for the cyber criminal (Smith, Holmes, & Kaufmann, 1999).According to a Microsoft security report in 2009, spam makes up 97% of all emails sent over the internet (Waters, 2009). In 2003, only 45% of email was spam (McCain, 2003), but has risen as professional spammers grow in skill and reach further and further to make more money. An average of 120 billion spam messages are sent every day (Kleiner, 2008).The foremost purpose of spam messages are to make money for the spammer (Schiller et al., 2007), and the primary means to do this is through fraudulent offers and deals. Among the most costly fraud includes phishing and advance fee scams. Phishing is the sending of email messages that masquerade as a source the user trusts, such as their online bank or EBay account (Brody, Mulig, & Kimball, 2007). The purpose of this tactic is to trick the target into revealing sensitive personal credential information, such as account logins, passwords, credit card numbers, or any piece of information that can be converted into stolen cash. This specific type of identity theft costs the United States 52.6 billion dollars a year (Brody et al., 2007).When spammers don't have the technical ability to spoof a victim's familiar website, such as their Bank account, they can always resort to relying exclusively on persuasion. Advance fee fraud does just this, where the spammer sends email solicitations pretending to be a potential business partner or foreign character with an opportune offering. A fanciful story is described in which the victim stands to make millions of dollars, by laundering money, collecting lottery earnings, or making a business deal. …