More spam coming (sigh)

Despite news to the contrary last month, spam is on the increase, ClickZ Stats reports. So does the BBC, offering one explanation: all those zombie PCs (in unsuspecting households out there) that got infected by trojan viruses, PCs spammers now use to send zillions of obnoxious emails about mortgages, body enhancements, and cheap prescription drugs (see "What if our PC's a zombie?!"). And now the Washington Post reports that spammers have a whole new distribution strategy. The New York Times says the US's CAN SPAM Act hasn't helped a bit. "The law did not prohibit unsolicited commercial email [just the fraudulent kind] and has turned out to be worse than useless." It basically made spam legal! The inevitable solution, ZDNET suggests: "We're about to become a whitelist world." What's that? you ask. Well, you know about black lists - telling our spam filters and ISPs filtering services what emails we *don't* want. Spam experts say that's no longer effective. Soon we'll have to tell these Internet checkpoints what email addresses we *want* to hear from (like my newsletter please!). Everything else will get blocked. The New York Times mentions another solution that's been circulating - kind of postage-stamp technology that makes the sender "pay." Meanwhile, spam and viruses "are also spreading fast to cell phones and other handheld, wireless devices," the Denver Post reports, citing two recent studies. Oh joy!