Recent initiatives include the July UK Spam Summit organized by the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) which aimed to identify ways to stem the flow of unsolicited commercial bulk emails. During the summit evidence was heard from ISPs, antispam software vendors, government representatives and legal experts who put forward their views on the current severity of the spam problem and how to solve it.
Another high-profile initiative comes from Microsoft which has announced that it is filing lawsuits in the US against 15 alleged spammers, two of which are UK-based. These lawsuits followed a flurry of activity from Microsoft concerning the issue of spam which saw Bill Gates sending a letter to customers explaining the steps Microsoft is taking to reduce spam and he also wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal about the topic.
Statistics from market research organizations and antispam suppliers show that the amount of spam being sent across networks is growing dramatically. For instance Gartner predicts that by December 2004 spam will account for more than 50% of all Internet email. Meanwhile figures from Brightmail, an antispam software company, show that in April 2001 7% of email that Brightmail checked was spam and in June 2003 that had risen to over 48%. The company anticipates that by the end of this summer spam will account for over 50% of emails.
Not only that, but analysis of US email by Brightmail found that 90% of messages carried some form of forgery of fraud in the subject header.