The flood of unwanted e-mail or "spam" appears to be subsiding in the US as a result of a 2003 law and technological advances, according to a government report released on Tuesday.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report said an avalanche of spam remains a major issue for Internet users, but that most indications are that consumers are getting less spam than two years ago.
The FTC said a survey by the e-mail filtering firm MX Logic found that spam accounted for 67 percent of e-mail passing through its system for the first eight months of this year, a 9 percent decrease from a year earlier.
More dramatically, the FTC said America Online reported that its members received 75 percent less spam last year than in 2003.
Globally, the report said, "Studies from other countries similarly report a decrease in the amount of spam reaching consumers' inboxes," citing studies from Canada and Finland.
In the US, the report found most retailers and marketers are complying with the CAN-SPAM law that allowed people to "opt out" of receiving future mailings, helping reduce unwanted messages.
The FTC said surveys show consumers "apparently have grown more tolerant of spam, having come to view it more as an acceptable nuisance rather than a cause for abandoning e-mail."
On the technological front, the report said many Internet service providers have taken steps to limit the amount of spam being sent from their networks.
This has cut spammers' use of "zombie drones," or using infected computers to relay messages without the knowledge of the computers' owners.
Spammers meanwhile are improving their technology, using more automated and decentralized methods to avoid detection, the FTC said.
"A more troubling shift in spamming tactics over the past two years involves the types of messages sent: Spam advertising commercial products or services is being replaced by spam that is potentially more harmful, as opposed to merely annoying," the FTC said.
"For example, phishing spam, which attempts to trick recipients into providing personally identifiable information to scam artists posing as legitimate businesses, has increased significantly since the enactment of CAN-SPAM," the commission said.
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