Sponsor
Hatfield School of Government. Division of Criminology and Criminal Justice
First Advisor
Scott Cunningham
Date of Publication
1-1-2010
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (M.S.) in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Department
Criminology and Criminal Justice
Language
English
Subjects
Spam (Electronic mail) -- Law and legislation -- United States -- Evaluation, Electronic mail messages -- Law and legislation -- United States, Internet fraud -- United States
DOI
10.15760/etd.704
Physical Description
1 online resource (ii, 109 p.)
Abstract
In January 2004, the United States Congress passed and put into effect the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN SPAM). The Act was set forth to regulate bulk commercial email (spam) and set the limits for what was acceptable. Various sources have since investigated and speculated on the efficacy of the CAN SPAM Act, few of which report a desirable outcome for users of electronic mail. Despite the apparent consensus of anti-spam firms and the community of email users that the Act was less than effective, there is little to no research on the efficacy of the Act that utilizes any significant statistical rigor or accepted scientific practices. The present study seeks to determine what, if any, impact the CAN SPAM act had on spam messages, to identify areas of improvement to help fight spam that is both fraudulent and dangerous. The data consisted of 2,071,965 spam emails sent between February 1, 1998 and December 31, 2008. The data were aggregated by month and an interrupted time series design was chosen to assess the impact the CAN SPAM Act had on spam. Analyses revealed that the CAN SPAM Act had no observable impact on the amount of spam sent and received; no impact on two of three CAN SPAM laws complied with among spam emails, the remaining law of which there was a significant decrease in compliance after the Act; and no impact on the number of spam emails sent from within the United States. Implications of these findings and suggestions for policy are discussed.
Rights
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Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/4712
Recommended Citation
Kigerl, Alex Conrad, "An Empirical Assessment of the CAN SPAM Act" (2010). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 704.
https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.704
Comments
Hatfield School of Government. Division of Criminology and Criminal Justice