The SEC has taken action, imposing a 10-day suspension on 35 penny stocks that have recently been advertised by spam. In a press release, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said that the action sent a clear message to spammers. Pink Sheets CEO Cromwell Coulson told Forbes Magazine that the suspended stocks won't be traded on the Pink Sheets exchange in future.

It's nice to see the SEC take action at last, but the press release is long on soundbites and short on detail, leaving a number of questions unanswered. According to the release, the suspensions were ordered because of questions regarding the adequacy and accuracy of information about the companies. The release doesn't make clear which information was inadequate and inaccurate — the information sent out by the spammers, or some other information provided by the companies? Crucially, the release also stops short of saying that the companies were responsible for the spam sent. It states only that each has been the subject of a spam email campaign.

To many people it seems like a no-brainer that the companies must be responsible for the spam. Who else would have an interest in pumping the company's stock? But as the studies by Rainer Böhme and Thorsten Holz, and by Laura Frieder and Jonathan Zittrain show, the list of potential suspects is pretty long. You don't need to be connected in any way to the company to have an interest in pumping its stock.

I'm officially agnostic on the question of who is sending this stuff (in the absence of overwhelming evidence one way or another). If the company issues a denial, I reproduce it (but I don't endorse it or attest to its truthfulness). Nevertheless, because spam can be profitable for third-party speculators and because it's rarely profitable — in the long run — for the company itself, it seems probable that many of the companies whose symbols turn up in our inboxes are innocent victims.

What about the thirty-five suspended by the SEC? I don't know and the SEC isn't telling. Thirty-three of those suspended have been featured on our spammed stocks list (Red Truck Entertainment (RTRK.PK) and Modern Energy Corp. (MODR.PK) are the only ones that have not yet been listed), and some are regular visitors to the list. But a number of those suspended have publicly disclaimed all responsibility for the spam sent in their name.

If the SEC had firm evidence to show that the companies had commissioned the spam, the press release would probably say so and the companies would quite likely be facing more than a suspension. My guess is that the SEC has identified other irregularities in information put out by the companies themselves and that these irregularities will serve as the final justification for the suspensions. The key question then is whether the SEC suspects — but cannot easily prove — that the companies commissioned the spam, or whether the SEC simply suspended a set of spam-advertised companies in order to frustrate the spammers.

If it's the latter, they're going about it in an odd way. The list includes companies like Goldmark Entertainment, which are almost permanently in the spammed stocks list and which have been heavily promoted within the last few days (I've counted 14 distinct spam runs involving Goldmark since 2005, 107 days of spam and almost 4000 individual messages), but it also includes companies like Waypoint Biomedical which — according to my records — was the subject of a single six-day spam run last summer, and Leatt Corporation, which seemingly hasn't been advertised for over a year. That looks like shutting the stable door after the horse has dwindled to a dot on the horizon.

It's possible that this was a preemptive rather than a punitive action. The SEC may have information to suggest that spammers have purchased these stocks and were gearing up for a spam run, in which case the suspensions could leave them satisfyingly out of pocket. But there's no way to tell from the press release.

It's too early to say what effect this will have on stock spam. If the SEC action sends a clear message, that message doesn't seem to have reached the stock spammers who are busily filling my inbox with messages promoting CBRP.PK and NNCP.PK. Operation Spamalot certainly seems to have begun with a great deal of sound and fury, but at this point it's hard to say what it really signifies.