Posted on 28-6-2002
Spam
It!
Ed from NY Times, June 27, 2002
"I got the Viagra," calls out one 20-something employee as he
clicks to
create a simple filter. "I need help on the breast enhancement,"
announces
another. Spammers are like fruit flies. They multiply. They
are elusive.
Worst of all, they evolve quickly. The most aggressive spammers
have become
very sophisticated, constantly varying subject lines, "from"
addresses and
body text, and more sophisticated, and more prolific. These
days, more and
more junk e-mail is finding its way into In boxes.
Brightmail says the volume of spam it encounters has almost
tripled in the
last nine months. The company adds that 12 to 15 percent of
total e-mail
traffic is spam; a year ago, that figure was closer to 7 percent.
Brightmail, which maintains a network of In boxes to attract
spam, now
records 140,000 spam attacks a day, each potentially involving
thousands of
messages, if not millions. Statistics like these are supported
by anecdotal
evidence from computer users, who report that they are seeing
more unwanted
e-mail every time they log on. Hounded by spam, some computer
users have
simply abandoned e-mail addresses.
No one knows precisely why spamming has increased so much. One
reason may
be that it is an inexpensive form of marketing favored in a
slumping
economy. Another may be that it is relatively simple to do —
it is not much
harder to send one million e-mail messages than it is to send
one. But some
analysts say that the increase may also result, paradoxically,
from the
efforts to curb spam. A kind of arms race may have developed,
those
analysts say: the more efforts are made to block unwanted e-mail,
the more
messages spammers send to be sure that some will get through.
Whatever the
reasons, individual complaints about e-mail are echoed by Internet
service
providers, some of which say that 50 percent of incoming e-mail
traffic is
spam.
Consumer advocates and politicians are complaining too, and
proposing new
laws to fight spam. Governmental agencies are also announcing
new
initiatives in the battle. Clearly, spam is a part of electronic
communications that everyone loves to hate. But it is also something
that
no one, it seems, can do much about. Here are the reasons.
Ideally, consumer advocates want the spam equivalent of the
1991 federal
Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibited prerecorded
telemarketing calls and junk faxes. The trade commission was
also given
power to enforce the legislation. A broad anti-spam law has
been approved
in Europe. On May 30, the European Parliament passed a ban on
unsolicited
commercial messaging. Electronic marketing can be aimed only
at consumers
who have given prior consent.
In contrast, more than a dozen spam-related bills have been
introduced into
the US Congress over the last two years, and most of them have
languished.
Of the handful that have made progress, the most recent is the
Controlling
the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing act (a
contorted
title that yields the acronym Can Spam), which was unanimously
approved by
the Senate Commerce Committee last month. The Can Spam bill
would, among
other things, let the F.T.C. impose civil fines up to $10 per
unlawful
message, require valid "remove me" options on all e-mail and
authorize
state attorneys general to bring lawsuits. Now it must be voted
upon by the
full Senate, and two other independent spam bills are moving
slowly through
the House of Representatives. But interest groups are lobbying
to tone down
the strongest aspects of spam legislation.
Those lobbyists are not spammers. They are some of the country's
largest
corporations and commercial associations: Citicorp, Charles
Schwab, Procter
& Gamble , the National Retail Federation, the Securities
Industry
Association and the American Insurance Association. The groups
argue that
many of the bills would unfairly restrict e-mail marketing and
put
electronic commerce at a disadvantage. "We would like the bill
narrowed so
only pornographic, fraudulent and deceptive spam are targeted,"
said John
Savercool, the vice president of federal affairs for the American
Insurance
Association. "We think that is where the consumer angst is."
Litigation
With little happening in Congress on anti-spam legislation,
25 state
governments have taken the lead and passed a variety of spam-related
laws.
They range from Delaware's 1999 outright ban on unsolicited
commercial
e-mail to more indirect limitations. Most states ban false return
e-mail
addresses, require "remove me" provisions or demand labels on
sex-related
messages. (New Zealand parliament seems to have not notices
the spam
problem, zero response from Wellington - Ed.) But laws, whether
federal or
state, may serve as a deterrent only when they are enforced.
And
enforcement of these state anti-spam laws is more the exception
than the
rule. Despite hundreds of thousands of consumer complaints to
state
agencies, only Washington State has filed a lawsuit based on
anti-spam
legislation. Other states that do not have anti-spam laws, like
New York,
have sued or charged spammers by using laws on deceptive marketing
and
computer hacking. The cases are pending.
Legal experts say the problems with local spam laws are manifold.
First of
all, most do not prohibit spam. "Even if the laws were enforced
effectively, they wouldn't address most of the spam problem,"
said David E.
Sorkin, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago
who runs a
site called Spamlaws.com. "The implied message is that if you
weren't lying
about it, it would be O.K. to spam people."
Second, spam transcends state (and national) boundaries, and
many of the
state laws stipulate that they take effect only if a spammer
can
"reasonably know" that the recipient is a resident of a particular
state.
Third, spammers are elusive. Lawsuits generally need to nail
down a
physical presence to proceed. When the F.T.C. sent warning letters
to
spammers with false "remove me" options, more than 20 percent
of the
letters came back because the addresses registered with the
domain names
were false. Telemarketers are easier to identify because telemarketing
is
expensive and as a result, such companies need assets. All a
spammer needs
for business is a computer, an Internet connection and an inexpensive
CD
containing spamming software and tens of millions of e-mail
addresses.
"Most of the spammers are not wealthy people," said Stephen
Kline, a lawyer
for the New York State attorney general's office. "It's tough
if you are
going after someone with very few assets to get restitution
for consumers
or justify the costs."
So most spam-related lawsuits have been brought by companies
and
individuals motivated more by a sense of a crusade than by the
prospect of
a financial reward. In March, Morrison & Foerster, a California
law firm,
filed a lawsuit against Etracks, an e-mail marketer, for sending
e-mail to
its servers. Etracks says that it works with permission-based
marketing, a
contention that Morrison & Foerster disputes.
Some I.S.P.'s, including CompuServe and AOL, have filed suit
against
spammers to prevent them from sending unsolicited e-mail to
users of those
services. But using lawsuits to combat spammers is like trying
to catch
swarming fruit flies by hand. For every one you manage to catch,
there are
10 more undeterred ones pestering you. (AOL sells email addresses
of its
users, so any talk of anti-spam rings hollow - Ed.)
Technology
To date, the most effective weapon against spam is technology.
"Spam
requires a technology solution because it is a technology problem,"
said
Ken Schneider, chief technology officer at Brightmail. But even
technology
is limited, since spam is e-mail and e-mail is designed to flow
easily.
Only 5 percent of all enterprises will be able to filter 90
percent of spam
in 2002, said Joyce Graff, research director at Gartner Research.
Businesses have tried to throw up all types of defenses. Many
reject mail
coming from computers that are known to have been hijacked for
spam. Some
I.S.P.'s reject e-mail sent in bulk. That often results in the
rejection of
legitimate noncommercial messages sent to addresses on mailing
lists. Other
technological approaches limit e-mail to preapproved senders
or senders who
respond with a password — approaches that slow down the transmission
of
e-mail. Users can also buy personal In box protectors. Brightmail,
which
has one of the most sophisticated services, says the best spammers
are
always a step ahead of its defense mechanism. They evade Brightmail
filters
by randomizing the characteristics that filters look for. "It's
very
difficult to fight," said Mr. Long, the war-room worker. "You
get
entrenched fighting it one way, and they go put a new tool against
you."
Spam may be an inescapable element of online existence. "Is
spam going to
be something we will all learn to live with, like increased
airline
security?" asked Enrique Salem, chief executive of Brightmail.
"Or will it
disappear?" For spam to disappear, a combination of coordinated
international regulatory action, aggressive enforcement, software
and human
oversight is needed, Mr. Salem said. The bad news is that until
that magic
combination comes about, spam will continue to clog In boxes.
The good news
is that it could help you look younger, feel more virile, become
debt-free
and get a college degree at home. Really...
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