During the first three weeks of July, I kept track of how much real e-mail I got versus the amount of spam. There were roughly two spam messages for every real message. Apparently I should consider myself lucky.
According to state Rep. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, 90 percent of all e-mail traffic worldwide in 2007 was spam. It may be higher than that now, because junk mail has been growing faster than pond scum in City Park.
Spam, according to The Washington Post, was just 8 percent of all e-mail in 2001; now we can call ourselves fortunate if 8 percent is non-spam.
Last spring, the Colorado legislature passed, and Gov. Bill Ritter signed, Rep. Carroll’s HB 1178, “The Spam Reduction Act of 2008.” It officially takes effect on Aug. 5 unless someone wants to challenge it by putting it to a popular vote.
That’s highly unlikely, especially at the 11th hour. Who wouldn’t want to crack down on spam?
Not enough people, apparently. Carroll says very few people file official complaints. “My biggest frustration is we haven’t done a good job of telling people how to complain,” she said.
Or it may be simply that the state law is redundant. Or that people figure it’s just too much trouble; they’ll just hit the “delete” key.
Colorado already had a junk e-mail law, passed in 2000, but it was superseded by a federal law passed in 2003. HB 1178 was an attempt to clarify that the state attorney general has concurrent enforcement powers and can go after spammers “to the maximum extent permitted by federal law.”
The federal government, though, still carries most of the weight. The Colorado man who was the so-called “king of spam” — the one who escaped from minimum security last week, with fatal results — was convicted in federal court.
The state law doesn’t get much attention. A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office said he was unaware of any complaints being filed. Carroll said she’s unaware of any enforcement, either, at least not at the state level.
“To be blunt, the AG was not excited about the new power,” she said.
Actually, the attorney general might have been more excited had the legislature granted his office the money to hire a new person charged with responsibility for enforcing the law. That didn’t happen.
What’s puzzling is why so few — if any — complaints have been made. If more people forwarded their junk e-mails to the authorities who can do something about it, Carroll says, it would be easier to track and prosecute the junk merchants.
Under the law, any e-mail that doesn’t disclose its actual point of origin, or that is intended to “mislead or deceive” is a violation. That would seem to describe just about everything caught by my spam filter. In addition to criminal penalties, there are civil penalties of up to $10 million.
When does it stop being an annoyance and start being a crime? “Good question,” said Carroll. The answer is that almost all of it is deceptive or fraudulent and that makes it criminal. It also can crash servers and spread computer viruses.
The attorney general’s office, and Carroll, recommend reporting spam to the Federal Trade Commission (forward it to spam@uce.gov) or your Internet service provider. Clicking on “report spam” is a start, but it’s important to include the full e-mail header to facilitate tracing.
“They need to know where to send it and take the time to do it,” Carroll said. But sheer volume may be what’s putting people off. At the rate I was getting spam earlier this month, I’d have 5,157 junk e-mails over a year’s time.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News. His column appears twice a month.
