“As a global company that scans 30 million emails a day for 7,500 companies worldwide, we believe this legislation is another tool in the arms race against spam. Yet, if signed into law as is, it could increase already growing volumes of spam and adversely affect consumers and businesses in a number of ways:

• The legitimate marketers, who helped craft the legislation, and known spammers have publicly voiced excitement about this legislation and cited an increase in orders for online marketing campaigns that use spam.
  
• For years, computer users have been advised against opening or replying to unsolicited emails. By opening emails and their various attachments, users run the risk of infecting their computers with mass mailing viruses such as Sobig.F that have been responsible for the doubling of spam over the last six months. By replying to mails sent by malicious spammers, users are validating their email addresses, thereby setting themselves up as a live target to receive additional illegal or legal spam.
  
• A do-not-spam registry, if it were to be created, poses significant privacy and security challenges and risks. We have every reason to believe that a national database with multiple layers of security protecting millions of email addresses could be compromised at some point in the future.
  
  

“Unfortunately, considering that two thirds of all spam is now being sent illegally through open proxies created in part by viruses specifically designed to establish networks of spam-relay machines—and that increasing amounts of spam and online scams are being sent from cyber cafes in Russia, China and elsewhere where criminals are immune to U.S. laws--we don’t believe this legislation will prove effective at protecting consumers or businesses from the growing problem of spam.

“Because spam is inherently a technology-based problem, MessageLabs believes that technology is the only real way to ‘can spam.’ Technology, effective laws and successful law enforcement must all combine if we are ever going to win the war on spam.”

About MessageLabs

MessageLabs is a leading provider of integrated messaging and web security services, with over 21,000 clients ranging from small business to the Fortune 500 located in more than 100 countries. MessageLabs provides a range of managed security services to protect, control, encrypt and archive communications across Email, Web and Instant Messaging.

These services are delivered by MessageLabs globally distributed infrastructure and supported 24/7 by security experts. This provides a convenient and cost-effective solution for managing and reducing risk and providing certainty in the exchange of business information. For more information, please visit www.messagelabs.com.

Media Contacts:

US:
Marissa Vicario, MessageLabs, +1 646 519 8116, mvicario@messagelabs.com,
Hill & Knowlton for MessageLabs, +1 212-885-0552, messagelabs@hillandknowlton.com

EMEA:
Paul Wood, MessageLabs, +44 (0) 1452 627705, pwood@messagelabs.com
Weber Shandwick for MessageLabs, +44 (0) 20 7067 0500, mlukpr@webershandwick.com

APAC:
Andrew Antal, MessageLabs, +61 2 8208 7171, aantal@messagelabs.com
Spectrum Communications for MessageLabs, +61 2 9954 3299, messagelabs@spectrumcomms.com.au