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.