SA�s first law aimed at curtailing junk email earned a mixed report card after a year on the books as few spammers faced legal action and recent surveys showed that spam makes up an even larger proportion of online messages. Signed into law on December 16, 2003, the Can-Spam Act made it illegal to falsify the "from" and "subject" lines of email solicitations. It also required senders of bulk e-mail to include a working "unsubscribe" link in their messages and to honour consumers� requests to be taken off their mailing lists.

Through all the courtroom activity and the media attention it generated, spam levels rose in 2004, by almost all accounts. At the beginning of 2003, spam accounted for about 50 per cent of all email, according to Postini, a California-based anti-spam firm that scans about 400 million email messages a day for its clients. By the time Can-Spam was passed at the end of 2003, that figure had grown to roughly 75 per cent. Throughout 2004, spam accounted for 75 to 80 per cent of all email, said Postini. ... more