Background
The Forms of Spam in New Zealand
9. Spam largely takes the form of unwanted, unsolicited, commercial emails via the Internet. It can also include other forms such as text messages using short message services via mobile communications technologies. How to define "spam" is one of the key policy issues raised by this paper.
The Extent of Spam in New Zealand
10. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most spam received in New Zealand comes from overseas. This highlights the need for international co-operation to address the spam problem.
11. Recent reported figures suggest that the extent of spam received in New Zealand is similar to that experienced overseas. TelstraClear, which filters email for its clear.net and paradise.net customers, indicated that in October 2003 spam accounted for 46% of the email received, in November 2003 52% and in the first week of December 2003 62%.
12. Ihug has indicated that in September 2003 it stopped 5.1 million spam emails and in November, 6.5 million. It has also said that for the 29% of its customers who use its voluntary spam filter, spam accounts for 75% of their email. Xtra has given figures ranging from 38% to 68% since it implemented its anti-spam filter in November 2003.
13. According to Brightmail, an anti-spam software company, as of March 2004, unsolicited bulk mail volumes accounted for 63% of all email traffic on the Internet, up from just 8% of traffic in mid-2001. Another anti-spam solution company, MessageLabs, found that 55% of the emails it scanned in May 2003 were spam, and the volume of spam it has detected has increased in the last ten months from 60 million per month to over 350 million per month.
The Detrimental Effects and Costs of Spam
14. Spam imposes costs on all Internet users. It is a nuisance to have to continually deal with unwanted emails. More importantly, however, spam uses scarce resources of users and service providers without compensation or approval. Spam consumes network and computing resources, email administrator and helpdesk personnel time, and reduces worker productivity.
15. It is difficult to calculate the total costs of spam, though estimates suggest the costs at the global level are high. For example, a recent European Union (EU) study estimates that the worldwide cost to Internet subscribers of spam is in the vicinity of €10 billion a year. An American firm, Nucleus Research, estimated in 2003 that the economic cost is $US874 a year for every office worker with an email account, which multiplied by 100 million workers in the USA amounts to about $US87 billion. Nucleus Research estimated that the average worker receives 13.3 spam messages a day, which takes 6.5 minutes to process. That equates to 1.4 per cent of their productive time. Other estimates put the cost to productivity higher. It is likely that this cost has grown substantially since 2003.
16. The practice of spamming also raises concerns associated with privacy, fraudulent or deceptive messages, the sending of pornographic material, attacks on the security and integrity of computer networks through viruses and the like, identity theft, and reduced consumer confidence in the use of the Internet for the purposes of e-commerce.
17. The indiscriminate sending of offensive or pornographic material through spamming is a particular concern because of the harmful effect it can have on the young and the vulnerable. Effective measures against spam should therefore seek to address this issue.
Measures Aimed at Reducing Spam
18. There are a number of approaches or measures which are aimed at reducing spam. These consist of:
- Legislative or regulatory measures;
- Self regulatory measures such as industry codes:
- In New Zealand the Direct Marketing Association
- (DMA) has developed a set of standards for email marketing by its members. The DMA recognises that the adoption of industry-wide standards of best practice and ethical conduct regarding the use of email for marketing purposes will promote consumer confidence in eCommerce and ensure that proper account is taken of consumers' right to privacy;
- Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in New Zealand will generally not tolerate spammers operating from their networks and will have them removed;
- Education and awareness campaigns (in New Zealand the Internet Society of New Zealand (InternetNZ) is active in this area). InternetNZ has set up the StopSpam website
- as an online resource for helping to deal with spam. It includes the following four golden rules for Internet users:
- never buy anything advertised in spam;
- never reply to spam;
- never use "remove" options in a spam;
- distrust everything;
- Technical measures such as the use of filtering by ISPs and users. If an ISP uses filters at its server then that means users will not see spam that is filtered out. The issues that arise are the possibility of false positives (legitimate emails being caught by the filter) and the lack of ability of users to customise filtering software according to their own requirements. Anti-spam technologies are not wholly effective however as spammers develop more sophisticated technologies to overcome the effects of filtering.
19. The general consensus internationally is that a multi-dimensional approach combining all of the above offers the best prospects for reducing spam, while noting that international co-operation is also a critical factor.
20. The benefits for New Zealand of legislating against spam are:
- It enables legal action to be taken against spammers based in New Zealand;
- It prevents New Zealand being seen as a safe haven for spammers as legislative measures begin to be implemented in overseas jurisdictions;
- It assists New Zealand in efforts to obtain international co-operation to combat overseas sources of spam if we have our own house in order;
- It allows the New Zealand Government to effectively co-operate with overseas government anti-spam enforcement agencies, to help trace the senders and beneficiaries of spam sent to New Zealanders.
1. Do you consider spam to be an important issue? Has it significantly affected you in any way?