Computer users hoping that a new federal law would help cut the spam flowing to their in-boxes so far have been disappointed.
Since President Bush signed the new restrictions into law Dec. 16 and they went into effect Jan. 1, spam-filtering companies and Internet providers report little change in spam patterns, which have relentlessly marched to higher levels over the past two years. Estimates vary, but spam accounts for roughly 60 percent of all e-mail traffic, with costs to fight it exceeding $10 billion a year.
____Tech Policy Year in Review____  washingtonpost.com's tech policy team members summarize major developments in 2003 and look forward to what 2004 holds for the debate over Internet taxes and the battles to can spam and stop Internet crime. 
• Internet Security and Cybercrime: A look at the increasingly sophisticated nature of online crime.
• Spam: Critics charge the new federal anti-spam law won't work.
• Internet Sales Taxes: It may be 2005 before the state-led effort to tax Internet retail sales gains traction.
• Internet Tax Moratorium: The states' rights issue collided with efforts to renew the Internet access tax ban. Will Congress cut a deal in 2004?
• Tech Policy Wrap-up: Major developments in 2003.
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At California-based Postini Inc., which provides e-mail protection and filtering for businesses, spam reached a new high last week, accounting for 84.9 percent of the roughly 1 billion pieces of e-mail it handles each week.
"We're not seeing the hard-core spammers cleaning up their act in any way," said Andrew Lochart, Postini's director of product marketing.
At Brightmail Inc., the leading spam-filtering company, the number has held steady at about 60 percent of the e-mail it handles. Internet account providers Earthlink and America Online said they also have seen little measurable change in spam patterns in the past couple of weeks.
The new law is designed to attack the most nefarious spammers and their techniques for avoiding detection. The law makes it illegal to disguise the originating Internet address of spam, to use misleading subject lines, and to electronically "scrape" or copy e-mail addresses from Web sites that then can be used to send spam or be sold to other marketers.
The law also requires that marketers provide valid ways for consumers to request to be free of future mailings, and to honor those requests. Marketers also must place their physical addresses on their e-mails.
As companies, consumers and policymakers have been more aggressive in trying to combat spam, many bulk e-mailers have moved their operations overseas to avoid detection and prosecution under U.S. laws. That movement has accelerated in the past two weeks, said America Online spokesman Nicholas J. Graham.
Graham said that of the roughly 2.4 billion pieces of spam AOL blocks a day, there has been a roughly 10 percent shift in their origins to overseas-based Internet addresses. AOL's spam-fighting group believes this reflects spammers successfully commandeering unprotected machines and networks overseas and turning them into spam-delivery engines, Graham said.
America Online also has seen an uptick in spam peddling counterfeit Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, and quick-weight-loss gimmicks, which Graham attributed to the holiday season.
None of the Internet service providers or spam-filtering companies spotted indications that spammers are complying with even pieces of the law.
The most notorious spam still has no unsubscribe links. If the unsolicited e-mail does, it is likely to be used by spammers to confirm that they have hit a valid e-mail address, Lochart said.
This presents consumers with a dilemma. Under the new law, spammers are in violation only if they disregard the opt-out request, but many anti-spam groups advise consumers not to click those links if the e-mail appears to be from an illegitimate business.
Subject lines also increasingly contain garbled characters to try to evade spam filters, and some simply contain links to Web sites that might contain pornographic content. The new law requires pornographic material to be labeled as such.
In an informal survey of incoming e-mail trapped by spam filters, The Washington Post found one bulk company had included a prominent unsubscribe link and a physical address on its e-mails pitching men's ties and auto loans. The e-mails were sent by Optinrealbig.com, a Colorado-based bulk mailer recently sued by New York state prosecutors for fraud in an elaborate spam scheme.
The company's owner, Scott Richter, has denied the charges.
The new federal law is controversial, because it supplanted some state laws that were more restrictive on e-mail marketing. The early returns fuel critics who have argued that the worst spammers will ignore the new law, while other firms will send more commercial e-mail as long as it is within the rules.
But the Internet and spam-filtering providers said it is still too early to pass judgment on the new law.
