* FTC reports on idea of using bounty system for finding spammers
Many spam recipients would probably like to adopt the Old West approach of “Dead or Alive” when it comes to finding and prosecuting spammers. Placing a bounty on the head of spammers would certainly provide an economic incentive to finding them.
In September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a report to Congress, “A CAN-SPAM Informant Reward System.” This report, required by the CAN-SPAM Act, discusses the potential for rewarding people who provide information to the FTC on spammers who violate the act.
The gist of the report is that if a bounty system is established: A) It should reward informants once the court has established the guilt of the spammer, not when the spammer pays his fine; B) It should reward informants only when they provide information about the most egregious violations of the act; C) Taxpayers should pay the rewards instead of using fines collected from spammers; D) The FTC should be the final determinant of who would be rewarded; and E) Bounties should be big.
There is an interesting blog discussion on this issue at Marginal Revolution in which the author of a piece entitled “Spam Bounty” argues in favor of Point B above. The author contends that “focusing rewards on the spammers responsible for the particular pieces of spam that went out to the most people” would be the most effective method of stopping spammers, since it would limit information on less problematic types of spam. Already, the FTC processes 300,000 pieces of forwarded spam each day. Offering big bounties for any violation of the CAN-SPAM Act would likely result in an enormous increase in the amount of spam sent to the FTC for evaluation.
A bounty system might work very well to stop some of the most offensive spammers. A precedent for such a system was set by Microsoft earlier this year when it issued a $5 million bounty on virus writers; this led to the arrest of the 18-year-old German author of the Sasser worm.
However, unlike the authors of the report discussed above, I don’t agree that taxpayers should foot the bill for paying informants.
What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of bounties to stop spammers or virus writers? Please drop me a line at mailto:michael@ostermanresearch.com
