Despite the best efforts of regulatory and legislative bodies around the world, the brigades of programmers on the case, and the universal scorn of nearly a billion computer users, the war on spam — unsolicited e-mail — appears to be a losing effort.
According to the latest metrics available, spam now accounts for about 90 per cent of all e-mail — for every message you want you get about nine that you don’t. And it’s only going to get worse.
Right now spam is a major inconvenience, resulting in an untold number of unproductive hours for users, IT technicians and others who have the job of deleting or blocking spam messages. Because it’s now possible to send hidden spyware programs through e-mails, spam can also cause serious computer issues as tiny spyware programs pile up and start draining memory and processor power.
While spam filters do stop countless millions of these messages from getting through, the spammers, as always, seem to be one step ahead. Typically filters scan the text of e-mails, looking for key words like “penis enlargement”, “Anna Kournikova”, and “stock market tip” which they use to redirect those mails to the trash. Now, spammers are sending their text photo files, which foils scanning technology. Spammers have also gotten better at spoofing e-mail return addresses and subject text, making them appear legitimate — or harder for filters to distinguish from legitimate e-mails.
Stopping spammers has proven to be exceedingly difficult. Despite some of the most stringent anti-spam laws in the world, almost a quarter of all spam continues to originate in the U.S.
A lot of it is legal spam, complying to new anti-spam laws, but spammers have found several loopholes to exploit. For example, companies sending legimiate spam now have to give recipients the opportunity to opt out of future e-mails. But who has the time to reply to the hundreds of spam e-mails finding their way into your inbox on a daily basis? Besides, the spam never comes from the same source — it’s not hard to generate new e-mail addresses to make it appear as if the spam is coming from somewhere different, and spammers will just set up and take down holding companies as often as required to stay one step ahead of the law.
Any attempt to run spammers off U.S. soil would only result in the companies setting up off-shore and continuing to harass people at a safe distance.
Because spam is a global problem, it’s going to take a global solution.
The beginning should be a United Nations resolution whereby all countries agree to clamp down on spam using a set of agreed upon criteria and a universal definition of spam. A few countries won’t sign, but they can be isolated by Internet Service Providers by blocking all outgoing mail from their nation’s unique ISP numbers.
Another idea is to create a system whereby e-mail recipients have to pre-approve incoming mail — a pop-up window that asks if you would like to receive mail from the sender with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response. It adds a bit of inconvenience to e-mail users, but considering the time and effort most people spend to delete spam it’s a small price to pay.
One idea proposed by AOL, to charge senders a penny for every e-mail — an average cost of about 25 cents a day for most people, and millions of dollars a day for spammers — was universally unpopular. Not only did people doubt it would work, given the international scope of spam and the free nature of the Web, they also pointed to the fact that charitable organizations, groups that create community newsletters and so on have long mailing lists.
For the Whistler Off-Road Cycling Association, which sends e-mail blasts every week during the Loonie Race Season, the cost would be about $10 a week and $250 a year. Now imagine the cost for a group like the Canadian Cancer Society, Western Canada Wilderness Committee or David Suzuki Foundation that have tens of thousands of members. ISPs would rake in money, and spammers would find a way around the requirement anyway.
My favourite idea is to attack the spammers, a solution that is gaining traction among Internet users frustrated by the lack of action by governments and industry. It would work like a virus, with tens of thousands of people using their computers to simultaneously send messages to computers where spam originates — thereby overwhelming their computers and servers and shutting them down. It’s called a “denial of service” attack, and has been a favourite tactic of hackers for years.
Check out www.bluefrog.com for more information, and to subscribe to their Blue Security program. You’ll get less spam, and even better, you’ll get even!
Website of the Week — Vonage ( www.vonage.ca ). Your personal feelings on Vonage’s latest series of ads featuring the V-Phone aside — let’s just say it took me a few minutes to even notice the V-Phone in all the cleavage — it’s pretty neat technology. Like Skype (www.skype.com) and countless other Internet telephony services, Vonage is selling Voice Over IP, or the ability to make phone calls on the Internet. The Vonage advantage is that the USB connector makes it possible to access your unique phone account from any computer, anywhere in the world, and make all the free local and long distance calls you want for one monthly rate — ($20 a month for 500 minutes, $40 a month unlimited, with some restrictions — like no support for Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc.). The ad doesn’t show the headset, but it’s still a neat concept for people who make a lot of long distance calls in Canada and the U.S.
