Spammers in the Big House

If you haven't been bothered by spam yet, chances are you will be soon. Analysts who have charted the growth of e-mail believe that this year, for the first time, more junk e-mail may be sent than legitimate messages. Earlier this year, America Online reported it had blocked a billion spams in a single day.

As the creator of spamprimer.com, I take more than the usual precautions to keep my in box free of clutter. Yet about 250 junk e-mails manage to slip through my e-mail filters in a typical week. In addition to offers to enlarge my penis, refinance my home, make my septic tank flow freely, lose weight with a miracle bread diet, save my soul, buy herbal sex pills and access porn, spammers promise to help me steal credit card numbers, exact swift revenge, get rich quick (through spamming!) and buy cocaine, ganja, child porn and guns.

It's a cat-and-mouse game. Companies release new and improved filtering software, and spammers test it and make adjustments to ensure that their dreck can get through. The most common methods to get junk past filters are to change the spellings of trigger words (e.g., Viagra becomes Vi@gra, porn becomes p.o.r.n.) or use misleading subject lines ("Your account is due" or "I have your coat").

When spam first became a problem in the mid-Nineties, many people suggested regulation. The chief geeks, fearful of the federal government overseeing any aspect of the freewheeling Internet, promised Congress they could defeat spam with technology. If you make bulk e-mail illegal, they said, spammers will simply send their junk from overseas. In the meantime, the amount of spam has exploded. AOL has said that as much as 30 percent of its e-mail server time at any given moment is dedicated to handling junk (and that was six years ago). Brightmail, a San Francisco company that sells blocking software, estimates that 40 percent of all e-mail is spam (up from 8 percent in late 2001) and that 80 percent of it falls into three categories: 20 percent is solicitations for porn or personal-ad sites, 34 percent is designed to market products (e.g., long-distance services, spy cams) and 26 percent consists of come-ons for loans, real estate or cheap stocks.

The Net is under siege. ISPs have spent millions—perhaps billions—of dollars to update their servers to handle the load, and to add bandwidth. Brightmail says that nearly 6.5 million spam attacks occurred in February alone. The costs are passed on. One study estimated that $2 to $3 of each person's monthly bill for access goes to handling the deluge.

Some people argue that spam is protected by the First Amendment. Wrong. Spam is conduct, not speech. Besides the fact that nearly all spam is commercial (speech designed to sell you something is afforded less protection), spamming is the equivalent of a "denial-of-service" attack against networks and their users. And the spammers are relentless. Even if a system operator rejects attempts to use his machines to deliver junk, the spammers will continue their attacks.

Spamming is long overdue to be added to the list of federal crimes (it's already regulated in 26 states, although the laws are mostly toothless).

Here's what I propose:

(1) I publish several e-mail newsletters that are sent only to people who request them and confirm their request. This is known as "double opt-in." It should be the legal requirement for anyone sending bulk e-mail.

(2) Penalties for sending spam must be significant: at least $500 per message, the same as an existing law that bans junk faxes or requires telemarketers to remove you from their call list on request. This would make it more worthwhile to sue spammers for damages.

(3) Forgery of the sender's name or Internet address in a bulk e-mail should be a felony. Spammers often send their messages with the return address of an innocent party, who then sees his or her in box fill with bounced e-mails and complaints. Many innocents have had their online businesses closed by their ISPs after being accused of spamming.

The geeks had their chance, and they couldn't get the job done. It's time for Uncle Sam to step in.

Stop Spam

1. Don't post your address to websites, discussion groups or chat rooms. A spammer will find it and sell it to other spammers. The Federal Trade Commission once posted a test address and received a spam within 10 minutes.

2. If you need a public address, use a free mailbox on Yahoo or Hotmail that you can abandon when the junk gets too thick.

3. Consider installing a mail filter. For Eudora, see Spamnix.com. For Outlook, visit SpamNet.com. For Mac, try Spamfire (matterform.com).

4. Don't complain or ask to be taken off a list, even if the spammer promises to honor your request. Your response only demonstrates that you read spam, which will lead to more spam.

5. Ensure that your ISP is taking steps to combat the problem, such as installing SpamAssassin. Some are more diligent than others.