Spam Across America: A Plague of Unwanted E-mail Messages are Choking the Web

March 20, 2002

The word “spam“ used to represent such an innocent icon of Americana...a simple (albeit
mysterious) lunchmeat, lovingly tucked between two slices of Wonder Bread by a June Cleaver type in high heels and pearls.
But the age of technology has brought new meaning to this word. Now it represents the
volumes of unsolicited junk e-mail clogging our mailboxes the way its namesake clogs the arteries. The e-mail version of spam supposedly got its nickname from the famous Monty Python skit in which a poor couple‘s attempt to place their restaurant order is drowned out by a chorus of Vikings chanting “Spam! Spam! Spam!“
However it came about, it‘s a real nuisance. “Get rich quick“ schemes, pornographic ads,
“sure-fire“ stock offerings, and quack health remedies are just a few of these unregulated,
unscrupulous, offensive and often fraudulent e-mails.

X-Rated E-Mails
Spam is nothing if not a growth industry. According to the Coalition Against Unsolicited
Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE), about 11 percent of all e-mails are now spam. Last year, the average e-mail user received 1,470 unsolicited commercial messages.
And no one is spared. A friend tells of letting her seven-year-old son open an e-mail account
so he could write to his grandmothers. But the warm, fuzzy experience she hoped for was soon
marred by an inbox flooded with spams -- up to 30 a day -- all of them unsolicited and most of them pornographic.
“I think our mistake was allowing his name to be listed in the “white pages,“ she says. “We
were forced to abandon the account completely and set up a new one under a different name. What kind of world is it when seven-year-olds are inundated with x-rated e-mail?“
How do we get on these cyber-telemarketing lists anyway? For one thing, spammers have
developed powerful programs that scan the Internet and grab e-mail addresses from Web sites, chat rooms, newsgroups, and discussion forums.
But it could be something as innocent as searching for information on “candy“ or “Hong
Kong.“ Suddenly, you‘re in the midst of an x-rated Web site that refuses to let you out. You try and “x“ your way out of one screen and another one pops up. Eventually, you have to shut down the computer and start over. Not long after that, your e-mail is deluged with x-rated spams, totally unsolicited and unwanted.
“They‘ll tag your machine,“ explains Sue Bouchey, Web guru for Pentel.net, a local Internet
Service Provider. “That‘s how they get you, and then they‘ll pass along your e-mail to other sites.“
And when you try unsubscribing to the offensive e-mails, the message comes back
undeliverable. The spammer has already changed their address. Some have even figured out a way to put YOUR e-mail address in both the “from“ and “to“ lines.

Fighting Back
In the name of self defense, many Internet Service Providers fight back with filters -- some as effective as containing water in your hands and others as quirky as the AOL filter that bumped out Harvard‘s early acceptance letters last year. For Bouchey, it‘s all-out war. She encourages Pentel.net customers to inform her of any spams they receive, so she can put a block on them.
A machine can also be programmed to reject mail received from an outside domain, which
is then checked against a blacklist handled by third party companies.
“It‘s real aggressive, because it means you‘ll shut down the whole domain, not just the e-mail address,“ she notes. “I‘ve tried to refrain from doing that because I don‘t want people saying, ‘Hey, I can‘t get e-mail from them,‘ so I‘m kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.“
Still, she‘s shut down about 300 domain names, e-mail addresses, and IP (Internet Protocol) addresses so far. Those with explicit names are easy to spot, but some of the worst offenders are highly-used domains that can‘t be shut down.
And there‘s another problem, too. Some people want access to those sites. “I can‘t block all
porns, because some people want to see it,“ she says. “And I can‘t go through everybody‘s mailbox and say, ‘Is this porn, do they want it or don‘t they?‘ That‘s up to the individual user.“
There are a number of “porn buster“ or parental control software programs on the market,
but Bouchey says you can program most newer Internet browsers to filter out offensive e-mails by telling them to look for specific words or users.
“You could sit there for probably a day and type in every word you don‘t want to see in your
e-mail,“ she says. “And tell it to delete anything with those words in the body, subject or sender of the e-mail.“

Anti-Spam Laws
About 18 states currently have anti-spam laws. In California, an appeals court recently
enacted a law forcing spammers to identify ads in the header, rather than saying “Hi Sweetie“ or “I checked this out!“
Similar laws are wandering around Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission recently
encouraged consumers to forward spam to its offices via e-mail at UCE@FTC.GOV. “We‘re the
only place in the country we know of that really wants to receive spam,“ notes Eileen Harrington, associated director of the FTC, in a recent Associated Press article.
In fact, the FTC receives an estimated 10,000 spam e-mails a day, holding 8.3 million
messages inside a computer it calls “the refrigerator.“ But one has to wonder how effective they‘ll be. A recent crack-down roped in seven spammers sending out bulk e-mails offering get-rich-quick schemes, but the offenders didn‘t have to pay any fines and only agreed to stop sending the e-mails and return any money they get in the future.
While the federal government and FTC sort out how to help consumers fight unwanted spam, people like Bennett Hazelton will continue to fight it his own way. The Washington state resident recently won four cases against misleading spammers, meticulously tracking down the individuals or companies behind the e-mails and taking them to court.
But the phenomenon shows no signs of stopping any time soon. Spammers are busier than
ever, especially since September 11 and the snail-mail anthrax scare.
“It‘s gotten very aggressive since last fall,“ notes Bouchey. “ I‘ve been doing this since 1996, and I‘ve never had to deal with spam on this level.“


Sidebar:

Steering Clear of Spam

When it comes to junk e-mail, “a little bit of prevention is worth many megabytes of cure,“
says Ray Everett-Church, one of the co-founders of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE).
America Online is fighting back with a new site (keyword: Mail Controls) designed to
educate its 9 million members about so-called spam and let them selectively block it from their mailboxes. Advice is also available online from sources like CAUCE (www.cauce.org), JunkBusters (www.junkbusters.com), and JunkEmail.org (www.junkemail.org), a resource page maintained by Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW) and the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Here are some of their tips:

1) Read the fine print. Before registering at a Web site, check its privacy policy and see how the company plans to use your e-mail address and other information. It could end up on a marketing list sold to spammers. If the policy is unclear or none is posted, “be wary,“ cautions Everett-Church. Likewise, don‘t put your e-mail address on product warrantee cards. “We all know they don‘t really need that much information to validate your warrantee,“ says Shabbir Safdar of VTW. “They just want to sell it.“

2) Use filters. Many online providers now block incoming bulk mail from known spammers.
AOL‘s new controls let the main account holder use separate filters for each screen name to
selectively block or accept mail from designated Web addresses or domains. Parents concerned about X-rated spam being sent to a child, for example, can set up the child‘s account to block mail from all addresses except those they‘ve listed as OK. Some providers also offer tools to scan messages for repeated use of common spamming terms such as “get rich“ or “XXX“ and block them at the user‘s request. Commercial filtering products are also available, such as MailJail for $24.95 (www.mailjail.com), an “intelligent“ tool that prioritizes mail and learns to recognize a user‘s preferences and frequent correspondents.

3) Don‘t respond or retaliate. Vigilante tactics such as sending multiple replies or huge
attached files “typically backfire,“ says Everett-Church. If the address is a fake, your reply will just cause problems for an innocent systems administrator, and your own account could be terminated. Instead, forward suspected spam to your Internet service provider and/or the FTC. On AOL, send it to the screen name TOSSpam, so the company can investigate it and document abuses.

4) Protect your address. Be aware that spammers use software to “harvest“ e-mail addresses from chat rooms, Web pages, online bulletin boards and Usenet newsgroups. Some Usenet posters try to foil the software by altering their address in a way they hope will fool the program but not a real person. They might, for example, insert “nospam“ into the address, then explain that the “nospam“ must be omitted or replaced before the address will work. But such tactics are complicated and can confuse real people who want to contact you.

Perhaps the best foil is an old-fashioned one. In AOL‘s new Mail Controls area, they suggest
that if spams include a phone number to place an order, call and give them an earful. Businesses might respond to feedback suggesting that junk e-mail alienates customers.