As the number of Internet junk e-mails continues to skyrocket, Arizona's politicians and Internet administrators are looking for ways to reduce the onslaught of unsolicited messages.
Although these messages, also known as "spam," have been around since the Internet's infancy, low start-up costs and near-zero expenses have made the practice ubiquitous in recent years. Spam accounted for 48 percent of e-mail traffic in May 2003, up from 22 percent the year before, according to Internet filtering firm Brightmail.
"Spam has been a problem for years," said William Lewis, ASU's chief information officer. "It's getting worse."
ASU experimented with an e-mail filtering system in 2002, but discontinued it after several faculty members complained that the program blocked legitimate messages from other countries, Lewis said.
The burden on ASU's servers forced IT to upgrade to a larger e-mail system last spring, leading to plans for a voluntary filtering system for the fall 2003 semester.
The system would be customizable, allowing users to create a "whitelist" of safe addresses that would be protected from filtering.
While Lewis and others are hoping to stifle spammers by cutting them off from their audience, Arizona lawmakers are attempting to go after them through legislation, recently making Arizona the 32nd state to pass an anti-spam bill.
Under the new law, spammers sending mail to Arizona can no longer use false e-mail headers and must clearly label all advertising. Violators of the law will be charged with a misdemeanor and penalized by up to $25,000 in damages.
"By allowing individuals to go out and sue other corporations and individuals who are spamming them, we hope to create a sense that this is undesirable," said Rep. Ken Clark, D-Phoenix.
Although most of the bill was based on existing laws in states, Clark said Arizona went a step further by restricting companies' ability to resell users' personal information.
"I think this closes a major loophole that exists, even with spam legislation in other states," Clark said.
Clark acknowledged the difficulty of reducing spam, saying that the law would be ineffective in isolation.
"We're under no illusion that our little law will stop all spamming," Clark said. "What needs to happen are stronger laws at the federal level and internationally... it's a long struggle."
Reach the reporter at garrett.neese@asu.edu.
