Posted on 19-3-2004
US War On Spam Affects NZ
19.03.2004 By Adam Gifford, NZ Herald
Four leading United States internet providers are taking some
of the
world's leading spammers to court under the new Can-spam Act.
If that sounds good, bear this in mind - spammers such as Davis
Wolfgang
Hawke and Eric Head, who have made millions sending bulk unsolicited
emails, could shift base to New Zealand where there is no anti-spam
law.
Internet NZ board member David Harris, the creator of Pegasus
Mail, this
month attended a regional anti-spam group meeting in Malaysia.
"It was
depressing to see how far behind we were on the legislative
front.
Countries like Taiwan and China were further ahead," Harris
said. "The New
Zealand Government is saying all the right things, but it is
not doing
anything."
Associate Information Technology Minister David Cunliffe bristled
at that
suggestion, and said policy work had been under way since late
last year.
"My officials have looked at a range of legislative vehicles,
from
amendments to the Harassment Act to the option of a standalone
bill,"
Cunliffe said. "My view is a standalone bill is more likely,
using an
opt-in approach like Australia."
An Australian anti-spam law, which came into effect this year,
says people
should not receive unsolicited commercial emails unless they
have
indicated they want such communications.
The US Can-spam law has been widely criticised because it takes
an opt-out
approach - that people have to tell spammers they don't want
to get any
more mail from them.
The advice Internet NZ gives on its new stopspam.net.nz site,
put together
by Harris, is never reply to spam, because that tells spammers
the address
is valid, and never use the remove option, because that shows
you have
read the spam thoroughly and therefore will be sent a deluge
of spam.
Cunliffe said he was working on a discussion paper for Cabinet.
"I can say
I aim to have a bill introduced this year and passed as soon
as possible,
but that must be weighed against the Government's other legislative
priorities," he said. Harris said the Government should
just adopt the
Australian law, which was developed and passed in just four
months. He
said a combination of education, technology, legislation and
enforcement
would put the spammers out of business. "Some technologists
say
legislation never solved anything. I can't agree with that.
Legislation is
how society discriminates between things which are acceptable
or not. "We
need that moral imperative."
The weakness in the current system can be seen with the response
Internet
NZ received when it tried to get authorities to take action
against Shane
Atkinson, the Christchurch man outed by the Herald last year
for sending
tens of millions of emails touting penis-enlargement pills.
"Internet NZ
lodged formal complaints with the police, Internal Affairs,
the Commerce
Commission and the body which regulates drugs," Harris
said. "The police
said straight up, 'this is not our area, we can't help you',
but the rest
just stood around pointing the finger at each other. "Even
though we think
there are existing laws which we believe can be used against
spammers,
there is no will to enforce them, so there are whole classes
of crime you
can commit in New Zealand with no fear of there being any consequences."
The risk is that as other countries move against spam, New Zealand
could
be identified as spam-friendly, and find email addresses originating
here
are blocked.
The reason for the pressure is because spam is continuing to
grow.
There is also now clear evidence computer viruses and spam are
linked. The
payload in some recent viruses has been "Phatbots"
- programs which allow
infected computers to be used to route spams or to act as proxy
servers
disguising the IP (internet protocol) address of the spammer's
real
server.
While there are things individuals can do - keep their email
address off
websites or chatrooms, not buy anything from spammers or reply
to spam,
set their email programs to not accept images, or run their
own spam
filter software - most rely on internet providers to filter
most spams
out. That raises the risk of false positives - not receiving
an important
email because the software thought it was spam. PlaNet uses
SpamAssassin.
Harris said that was only part of the answer. "You can
filter the bulk of
spam but it is still consuming bandwidth, it is consuming processing
power
and disk space as it passes across the internet and it is consuming
vast
quantities of developer time."
He said the only thing that would stop spammers, short of taking
them out
and shooting them, was to take away the money they made.
The former option should strike a chord with arch-spammer Davis
Wolfgang
Hawke, who in 1999 told Fox News, "I plan to make the Final
Solution a
reality." According to information contained on the spamhaus.org
Rokso
list (register of known spam organisations), that was the year
the then
20-year-old college student's plan to become the American Hitler
came
unstuck, when it emerged he was born Andrew Greenbaum. The "kosher
nazi"
turned his computer talents to selling penis pills, with great
success.
Many internet users will be watching with interest his day in
court.
Spam made up 62 per cent of internet email in February, of which
product
advertising made up 24 per cent, 14 per cent was porn, 11 per
cent scams
and 4 per cent straight-out fraud.
The US Federal Trade Commission estimates identity theft, where
spammers
have stolen or tricked people into giving them financial details
or
passwords, has cost US consumers US$60 billion ($91.8 billion)
over the
past five years.
Never give out your credit card information or a bank pin number
in
response to an email. Banks never send out such emails.
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