Ken Magill got his nose bent slightly out of joint in a post today about CAUCE’s support of a proposed anti-spam bill in Canada.
Here is what CAUCE had to say:
“An opt-out regime is what is made legal in America, by way of the CANSPAM act, and the United States is by far the main source of spam on the Internet today,” the letter said. “On the other hand, the drafters [of Canada’s bill C27] have carefully considered the laws of Australia and New Zealand, and the results are clear: neither of those countries now has much in the way of a home-grown spam problem after having adopted opt-in anti-spam laws.”
To this, Mr. Magill responded:
Consider the following:
Australia has 22 million people, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
New Zealand has 4.2 million people, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s World Fact Book.
This is compared to 305 million in the U.S.
According to Internet security firm Symantec, in the third quarter of 2009, botnets—or networks of infected computers—were responsible for 87.9% of all spam.
And Symantec may be right. But, the issue isn’t about the spam that botnets are sending. CAUCE’s point had nothing whatsoever to do with botnets. Rather their point had to do with “a homegrown spam problem.” The homegrown nature is what they were attacking.
By Mr. Magill’s measure, though, India and China should both top the US in the number of spam issues given that both countries have larger populations than the US. Even if we just look at raw numbers of users, China at least still beats the US (338,000,000 Internet users in China, compared with 227,636,000 Internet users in the United States as of June 09). Yet, according to Spamhaus, the US has the largest number of spam problems (with more three times the number of issues of China, which sits at number two). And India doesn’t even make the top ten list as of this morning.
As much as I respect Ken Magill for taking the heat that he does writing the things he does, he just flat gets it wrong here.
Mickey:
Respectfully, your argument here is fatally flawed. If Symantec is correct that close to 90% of spam is sent from infected machines, then it stands to reason that the amount of spam coming from a country is directly proportional to the number of machines located in that country and not remotely related to whether that country’s anti-spam laws are opt-in or opt-out based.
As a result, the number of Internet users China claims to have is a useless number here, not to mention that relying on Internet usage stats coming out of China is as dubious as relying on their grain- and steel-production claims during the Great Leap Forward under Mao.
I can’t find reliable stats on the number of machines in China or India.
I found one slide presentation claiming India has 31.5 million machines here, but I can’t verify it. If it’s true, however, it bolsters my argument.
If you can find me reliable sources that say China and India have more computers located within their borders than the U.S., and that the volume of unsolicited e-mail coming from those machines is less than the volume coming from U.S.-based machines—not “number of current known spam issues” as is listed on Spamhaus—I will publish a piece in Magilla Marketing admitting my argument was flawed.
However, I doubt I’ll have to make good on that promise. CAUCE’s argument that the U.S. is the leading source of spam in the world because Can Spam is opt-out based is ridiculous. As near as I can tell, India has no anti-spam law and China’s law is aimed more at limiting free speech than combating unsolicited e-mail.
It’s not the law—or lack thereof—causing close to 90% of the spam problem. Unless Symantec is wrong, it’s the number of infected machines.
Sincerely:
Ken