Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

A year or so ago I removed the email addresses from all our web pages (hundreds), to remove it from the view of spambots (my term for programs that scour newsgroups, mailing lists, or web sites for email addresses). Too late, my address is in the spammers lists, several times over..

What is Spam ?

Most spam is commercial advertising, typically for get-rich-quick schemes, or probable scams. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are borne by the recipient or the carriers. Spam consumes your resources. Many spam emails try to look like an honest attempt to do something nice for you. Dear friend, I noticed you are doing business on the net and I thought you'd be interested in...

Why is spam bad ?

As frustrating as the time and effort wasted, is the incredible stupidity of the schemes being offered. They depend on the fact that, in the USA at least, there seem to be a zillion suckers, and the leeches to prey on them. If you are familiar with 'infomercials' on late-night American TV - well, they are even more stupid than that. Spam is an American phenomenon (born of deep-rooted cultural memes such as Free Speech; consumerism; dislike of intrusive government) that's going to become a global problem soon enough. Although most people (Americans included) don't like spam, there's a vocal minority who worry that regulating the Interenet in any way will lead to the destruction of the American Way of Life (and therefore the World), and Big Brother will take over. Why worry if you have to delete a few spams each morning? Well, just wait till it's a few hundred...

Note: don't misinterpret the above to mean that I'm anti-American. I have an American wife and children, and live in the USA. You get the hardest truths from your best friends.

I've tried discussing it with one or two advocates but it boils down to something like this: "You can easily delete email. If that's too much trouble for you, use filters." The problems with these answers are that I have to actually read the stuff to be sure it's junk (unless the subject line is "MAKE MONEY FAST"), and filters simply aren't smart enough. The argument is rather like being told to wear a bullet-proof vest rather than complain that there might be too many guns on the streets. Well, if people do not complain about such things then they will certainly get worse. Just look at the moronic ads on American commercial TV. You get what you deserve - or tolerate.

There was once a discussion on a mailing list for online advertisers, about junk email. Most people seemed to be in agreement that email advertising should be very well targetted, and a couple of us stated that we had misgivings about any kind of mass emailing because we already get too much email - and the volume of email traffic is rapidly increasing. There are programs available to scour web pages, newsgroups, mailing lists, etc, for email addresses. The costs of sending out mass emailings are so low, especially compared with conventional mail, and there are people who frankly, don't care about inconveniencing others - and so I fully expect email traffic to eventually saturate the Internet and our inboxes unless we regulate it.

A couple of people didn't like to hear about this and started name-calling ("Chicken Little") and said that the onus is on us to use filters to sort our mail. The technology exists and they're going to use it. These people did not attach signatures to their emails, and did not offer their real names. Presumably they don't want this information to get into the hands of unscrupulous online advertisers.

You might not find it a problem yet, but if you post to any newsgroups or join any mailing lists or publish any web pages, and you include your email address anywhere, you will get spam email eventually. One or two of these may not bother you. The problem is that as more of these spammers get into the game, and they start to use automatic tools to glean email addresses - the spam rate is going to rise exponentially. Furthermore you might, for some reason, have several email addresses and these programs aren't smart enough to recognise they all resolve to one person. I've sometimes had a dozen or so identical emails arrive simultaneously.

So what can you do ?

• Boycott spammers. Do not buy their products. Complain to them.

• Use filters. Some spam is recognisable algorithmically, e.g. by who sent it, or the subject line, e.g. 'MAKE MONEY FAST'. Note that this method could filter out valid email if you are not very careful.

• Don't publish your email address more widely than necessary. You can use a comments form on your web pages.

• If you want to post your address to newsgroups or mailing lists put in some obvious 'take out' such as 'NOSPAM', e.g. me@home.NOSPAM.com; people will recognise what to do, hopefully spambots won't (for a while, at least).

• Most spam email comes with an invitation to 'remove' yourself from the list. Don't believe it! These almost always bounce, and apparently might also be used to harvest new addresses.

• Subscribe to the news.admin.net-abuse.* newsgroups, such as news.admin.net-abuse.email. Following the discussion will help you obtain some perspective on the issues, find out who's who and what's what, and provide you with useful information.

• Learn how to read headers before you complain to/about the wrong people. Headers which will quickly point out forgeries include Path, NNTP-Posting-Host and Message-ID. If you get a forged message, please report it to the postmaster or abuse account on the site from which it originated.

The Spam Bouncer	The Spam Bouncer, is a set of procmail recipes/filters. These recipes can be used as shared recipes for a whole system, or by an individual for their own mailbox only. While the Spam Bouncer itself must run on a Unix server which has Procmail installed, people who use Eudora, Pegasus Mail, and other POP clients can also use the Spam Bouncer on their Unix shell accounts to filter their mail before retrieving it from the server. If their POP client programs can filter mail by headers, they can filter questionable mail and administrative mail directly into appropriate folders via the "X-SpamBouncer" header.
Get that spammer!	A comprehensive list of tips and resources for dealing with spammers.
Stop Junk Email	This page is primarily directed at the victims of junk email, which generally means recipients, although junk emailers certainly cause systems operators and others big headaches, as well. Our goal is to eliminate all junk email. To accomplish this goal, we will attempt to teach victims and potential victims (that's everyone with an email address) the most effective methods of prevention and retribution. We also hope to get current and potential junk emailers to see the error of their ways by making them see it from the victim's point of view, and getting them to understand why postage-due marketing isn't very effective.
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email	CAUCE is a group of Internet users who are fed up with spam have formed a coalition whose purpose is to amend 47 USC 227, the section of U.S. law that bans junk faxing, so that it will cover electronic mail as well.
Death to Spam	Alchemy Mindworks are famous for their GIF Construction Set, and their Death to Spam is something I heartily endorse. Bravo for Alchemy Mindworks, this useful page has several constructive suggestions for dealing with the problem.
The Netizen's Guide to Spam, Abuse, and Internet Advertising	This much-referenced guide to electronic junk mail includes definitions, acceptable mass-mail practices, links to other antispam pages, and a blow-by-blow account of the Webmaster's personal vendetta against one relentless spammer.
Spam Hater	Spam Hater, written for Windows, works with most popular email applications to automatically analyze spam, find the true sender of the message, and prepare a letter of complaint, generates a traceroute query, which helps identify a spammer's upstream ISP. Sometimes spammers have their own domain and they'll simply ignore any messages sent to 'postmaster.'"
United States Postal Inspection Service: Chain Letters	"Recently, high-tech chain letters have begun surfacing. They may be disseminated over the Internet, or may require the copying and mailing of computer disks rather than paper. Regardless of what technology is used to advance the scheme, if the mail is used at any step along the way, it is still illegal. "

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