INTERNET spam is an ever-increasing problem. With more and more day-to-day activities taking place online, junk mail is becoming more commonplace.

But government agencies worldwide are putting more resources into cracking down on the people who send it and prosecuting them.

Susan McDonald Cooper, counsel for international consumer protection at the US Federal Trade Commission’s Office of International Affairs, said that significant progress was being made.

She explained the commission’s role in the global fight.

Spam is junk emails or newsgroup postings, especially commercial advertising in a large quantity.

‘Because the internet is a public network, little can be done to prevent spam,’ she said.

‘But improving detection and imposing severe penalties on offenders are being pursued the world over as the best deterrents.’

The commission is an independent agency empowered to enforce both competition and consumer-protection laws.

Part of its mandate is to protect the public from unfair and deceptive acts or practices.

As such it is the lead agency charged with protecting Americans from spam.

‘We bring 100 to 200 cases each year, with most defendants settling before court.’

It uses a multi-pronged approach including:

n Conducting research and studies.

n Issuing rules and regulations.

n Filing lawsuits

n Encouraging industry to develop technological solutions.

n Working with international partners.

‘Consumers forward an average of 270,000 pieces of spam to the FTC per day which is stored in a database for research. Almost 98 million pieces were received last year.’

Mrs McDonald Cooper said the FTC could press charges by two means. Firstly under its own act, lawsuits can be filed in federal court alleging that those using spam were engaging in unfair or deceptive trade practices.

The FTC could also bring action under the Can-Spam [Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing] Act which was introduced in January 2004.

Often cases allege violations of both.

The latter Act applies to commercial email that is advertising or selling a product.

It prohibits the sending of unsolicited email if the recipient has opted out of receiving from that sender. But it does not apply to emails from politicians, charities or anything that is not advertising.

Can-Spam makes it a crime to hack into computers to send spam or to use open relays and open proxies to send multiple commercial email messages. It is also illegal to send pornographic spam messages of falsely registered email accounts or domain names.

The act exposes spammers to penalties of up to £5,500if the case is brought by the FTC or other federal agencies.

Alternatively they could face statutory damages if the case is brought by a state attorney-general.

Since 1997 there have been 89 spam-related FTC cases, of which 63 were pre-Can-Spam and 26 since the law waspassed.

Courts have ordered defendants to pay more than £5.2m. in redress or disgorgement and £1.3m. in civil penalties.

The highest civil penalty in a single case was £450,000.

Mrs McDonald Cooper said Can-Spam had been successful, but it was an ongoing battle.

‘Spammers are using new techniques that escalate the technology in a filtering battle between them and consumers’ internet service providers,’ she said.

In December, the US enacted the Web Safe Act, which enables the FTC and foreign law-enforcement authorities to share confidential information to help each other conduct investigations and discovery in appropriate cases.