Spam on the decline but authorities need to keep fighting: FTC

BRUSSELS - Spam -- bulk marketing or pornographic offers by email -- appears to be on the decline but authorities need to keep up the fight, the head of the US Federal Trade Commission said here Thursday.
"Spam has been a huge problem around the world," Deborah Platt Majoras said at a news briefing in Brussels.
"The ISPs (Internet service providers) seemed to think that less spam is actually reaching consumers mail boxes.... That`s the first good news I`ve heard on spam, if it`s true," she said.
Despite the inroads regulators were making against those responsible for spam, they needed to keep up the pressure.
"I can`t say that I think that we`re going to whip this spam problem just through enforcement.
"We can do a lot of good but we`re still going to have to educate consumers and push the private sector to develop technology to deal with the problem and in particular to agree on an e-mail authentification standard so that we can surely actually know who is sending this e-mail," she said.

04/07/2005 17:31 GMT