Can-Spam fine – is it working?

National Communications Commission (NCC) of Taiwan reached an agreement last week's meeting that they will amend "Regulation of can spam management" in next year and propose to the Legislative Yuan. If the regulation passed, victims of spam will be able to claim compensation from spammers at maximum 2,000 NTD each. The total amount will be up to 20 million NTD per unique subject email. This is to improve the current situation of the spam proliferation. Looking at the trend, many countries are using legislative ways to punish and deter such acts, but it is very difficult to collect evidence while enforcing. Hackers were mostly utilizing foreign network location as a springboard. Law enforcement would need more international collaboration to solve the problem.

To the United States, the FBI announced last month that it has taken actions against botnet-runners (use of zombie computers to send spam hackers) by collecting evidence and arresting. It has charged eight American botnet - runners and one of them needs to be face a maximum 60 years in prison. The above-mentioned are aimed at hackers within U.S., but actually there are thousands of hackers and illegal companies actually in Russia, China and other places. Without true transnational cooperation, authorities are barely making a dent in the influx of spam, which are most pervasive in countries with lax laws. From the points of enterprises, even with the law is valid, it may too late to patch computers after they were attacked. The most important is earlier detection and prevention, not only to prevent external spam, but the prevention of in-house computers which compromised by hackers as the springboard. For internal monitoring, Cellopoint Email Firewall (CEF) supports outbound email scan. If an email does not behave normal, it will be isolated by CEF. The people in charge will be informed to confirm the delivery. After eliminating the possible of compromised computer, they can safeguard their reputation and remain a good corporate image.