This article re-prined in entirety from http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16604
in case you try the link and cannot get to it....
[Begin Quote]
Spammed If You Do, Spammed If You Don't
By Ben Fogelson, Eugene Weekly
August 14, 2003
During the research and writing of this piece I received an average of 69 spam e-mails per
day.
Did you know just how low an interest rate you can get? Care to help the Nigerian Empress
Ndugndugndug smuggle $500 million out of Africa? Are you in dire need of a truly
unstoppable penis?
If you're like most of us, you probably recognize these familiar queries as spam, or
unsolicited bulk e-mail.
"It's commonly believed," says Steve VanDevender, a university systems administrator,
"that there's about as much spam now as legitimate e-mail. And signs indicate that it's
just going to get worse."
I don't know if "TEEN BARNYARD SEX" can get any worse. What's happening with the spam
problem? What can you do to make your inbox more friendly? What'll happen if my wife takes
Viagra? Read on for answers to not all of these questions.
Spammers vs. Anti-Spammers
You're not the only one who wishes a violent end to e-mails featuring subject headings
such as "MAKE MONEY FAST" or "MASSIVE BLACK COCKS." You'll be glad to know there are
others, with more techie knowledge than you can possibly imagine, who fight the good fight
against the terror of unsolicited e-mail.
Spamhaus (www.spamhaus.org) may be one of the world's leading anti-spam warriors. An
organization dedicated to tracking and cataloging Internet addresses of career spammers,
Spamhaus notes on its site, "90 percent of spam received by Internet users in North
America and Europe is sent by a group of under 200 hard-core spam outfits." Almost all of
them, claims Spamhaus, are "blacklisted" on their site, allowing Internet providers, such
as UO or EFN, to freely access the Spamhaus list. Then providers can filter out messages
originating from the worst spam-associated locations.
But career spammers, "hackers gone bad, or they are crooks gone geek," as Internet lawyer
Alan Ralsky puts it, are continually finding new ways to exploit the Internet. "It's not a
technical problem," says EFN System Administrator Patrick Wade. "It's a social problem. We
can get technical and try to find out where spams are coming from, but then spammers work
hard to get around what we come up with. It's a cycle. For example, proxies used to not be
a problem."
Proxies are programs used by spammers to hide their tracks. Valuable to companies that use
more than one computer on a network, proxies, if setup improperly, can become hidden
treasure to the ever web-scouring tech-savvy spammer. Spammers use web-crawling programs,
sometimes called spiders, to search the net for proxies. When a spider program tells a
spammer it has found an unguarded proxy, off go millions of e-mails, and the spammer's
identity is concealed.
When anti-spam organizations fight back by publishing known spam origins, spammers return
the blows, legal style. Take for example the April 2003 lawsuit
(http://spamhaus.org/legal/answer-03-80295.html)filed against Spamhaus by Mark Felstein of
EmarketersAmerica in Boca Raton, Fla. (Florida is one of the 24 remaining states where
spam is still legal).
Felstein claims that Spamhaus' activity threatens EmarketersAmerica's existence through
the posting and trade of libelous information (their black list), sale of products which
block Emarketers transmissions, "interrupting the flow of interstate commerce and
international commerce" and a direct attack upon EmarketersAmerica. However, Spamhaus
asserts that not only had it never heard of EmarketersAmerica before the suit, but that
that corporation was formed only four weeks prior to the suit for the express purpose of
filing it. Spamhaus adds that it sells no product or information whatsoever, that users
may freely access Spamhaus's list of servers in order to block entry of spam transmissions
onto their own private computers and that Felstein also happens to be the sole proprietor
of EmarketersAmerica as well as the personal lawyer of Eddy Marin, "America's top
spammer."
The cast and characters are serious, and it seems they're dedicated to battling it out. In
a previous e-mail response to Felstein's impending lawsuit, Spamhaus wrote "[l]et me know
when you'll be coming over to London to file a real lawsuit under UK law, until then you
spammers simply spin on my forefinger."
At this time, a temporary restraining order request by EmarketersAmerica to prohibit
Spamhaus from continuing its activities has been denied.
Legislative Action
Pressure is building in Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (California-based Ferris
Research says in 2002 spam cost U.S. corporations $8.9 billion and U.S. Internet Service
Providers $500 million in lost time and productivity) from both vehement anti-spam groups
as well as fervent marketing, retailing and Internet provider industries. It won't be long
before spam will crawl back in the can or flip its lid wide open. There are several ways
it could fall, and opinions vary widely.
Opt-In or Opt-Out?
One version of legislation pushed by marketing, retailing and Internet provider industries
protects the rights of "legitimate" marketers to advertise by e-mail unless consumers
specifically "opt-out."
New federal bills, pushed by Republican Reps. Richard Burr (The Reduction in Distribution
of Spam Act of 2003) and Heather Wilson (The Anti-Spam Act of 2003) contain provisions
requiring advertisers to honor consumers' requests to be removed from specific e-mail
lists. Can you imagine responding to all the spam you receive, asking to be taken off each
list? "Unsubscribing is almost always useless," said EFN's Wade, "because that tells the
spammers it's a real address. Even if they do take you off, which isn't always the case,
they can sell your 'live' address to someone else." The concept of "opt-out" makes
anti-spam groups want to gag.
Ray Everett-Church, counsel for CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail),
expressing the sentiment that any legitimization of unsolicited bulk e-mail is a step in
the wrong direction, said of the two bills, "They're both equally ineffectual. It's like
two flavors of Swiss cheese."
For those who like cheddar, the flip-side is the "opt-in" approach, favored by anti-spam
organizations such as Spamhaus and CAUCE. So far there's nothing to represent "opt-in" in
federal or state legislative processes. It's the idea that everyone has the undeniable
right to receive only that which they wish to receive. The "opt-in" concept sets a
precedent that spam will not be allowed unless someone goes through the trouble of signing
up for it.
E-marketing businesses would remain, but in order to receive a marketing e-mail, an
individual would have to sign-up their Internet address with a particular group or
company, be sent a reply e-mail asking if their sign-up was intentional, send a
confirmation to that reply, and the previous "spammers" would then and only then find
themselves in the realm of "legitimate Internet marketing.
Of course to the e-marketers who currently send out 100 million e-mails a day, who use the
argument that some individuals do reply to their electronic deluge, that solution smells
like limburger.
Do-Not-E-mail Registries
Borrowing steam from the recent enactment of a federal Do-Not-Call List (10 million
sign-ups in the first four days) state and federal legislation has popped up in a similar
effort to taper unsolicited e-mail.
The idea is that individuals would pay to be on a do-not-e-mail list and all e-marketers
would be required to check the list, being prohibited by fines of up to $25,000 from
e-mailing people on it.
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer's bill SB1231 to initiate a national No-Spam Registry has
been read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, but
appears to have only one co-sponsor and has seen little action since June 6, according to
the U.S. Senate website, as compared to federal "opt-out" resolutions such as Rep. Richard
Burr's bill HR2214 with 33 co-sponsors and activity in the House as recent as July 8.
While a do-not-e-mail registry sounds attractive, anti-spam experts fear it could be a
disaster. First, one reason that do-not-call registries seem to work is that most
solicitation calls are made from inside the country. Abusers are and will be easier to
track and prosecute. Some say that the great majority of spam is already shuttled
off-shore before it comes back in, through unsecured, trail-obscuring proxies. Secondly, a
do-not-e-mail registry would consist of a list of e-mails. A big, fat, juicy, long list.
As to whether a spammer would use the list, well, the answer is yes, but perhaps not for
the reason you think. "They're never going to follow the rules," said VanDevender. "There
are spammers out there who have several millions of dollars worth of legal judgments
against them, which they'll probably never pay, and they're still blasting away millions
of spams a day. For some of them spamming is almost a sociopathic outlet. It's very hard
to prove where a spam came from, and they'll get e-mail addresses any way they can. The
list," he said ironically, "would be a prize."
Do's and Don'ts
DO: Use "plus addressing" (offered at EFN) if you care about who's giving out your e-mail
address. Here's how it works: Get an account, with an e-mail of, for example,
nospam@efn.org. What's different with plus addressing is that nospam1, nospam2, nospam3
and so on will also be sent to you, only they'll each come into individually labeled
folders. Next, when you sign up for a Victoria's Secret card and they ask for your e-mail,
you give them one of those plus addresses, such as nospam14. If you ever get a spam e-mail
sent to the nospam14 folder, you know which organization sold or shared your e-mail, and
therefore where not to buy your panties.
DON'T: Register software or other products, or buy products that require you to enter your
e-mail, without reading the fine print. Many of these companies put you on mailing lists,
which theoretically could circulate forever. Send your e-mail address into the world at
your own spam peril.
DO: Check the address of incoming e-mail. Some e-mail from sites that look just like Ebay
or Penpal may ask you to re-enter your account or credit card information because they
misplaced it. You might notice that the return address isn't www.penpal.com,but instead
it's something nearly identical, like www.penpaI.com. A general ground-rule is that once
you've entered personal information, a company is never supposed to ask you for it again.
DON'T: Reply to spam e-mails. If you do, some spammers will know they have a "live" one,
and keep spamming, sell or share your e-mail address.
DO: Use spam filters built into your mail program. Outlook Express, for example, has
filters to keep out all e-mails containing certain words. If you get a lot of spam, go to
the "Tools" menu, pull down to "Junk Mail Filter" and raise the "sensitivity" of your
filter. If you're afraid certain messages wont get through, add desired incoming addresses
to your address book, and they'll make it to your inbox. Outlook Express also provides you
with a box to enter domain names, such as "Excite," or "Hotmail," so that all e-mails
originating from those domains are allowed passage (Pull down the "Tools" menu and select
"Rules.")
DON'T: Publish your e-mail on the web as a hot link. Each time you do gives web-crawling
programs that much more of a chance to find your address.
DO: Use this great timesaver: When you come to work in the morning, or whenever you've got
a loaded inbox, select or highlight ALL the e-mails in your inbox. Then, instead or going
through and eliminating spam one at a time, use the "Apple" key (on PCs it's the "control"
key) and the mouse to de-select just the legitimate e-mails. When you've selected all the
good e-mails, hit "delete"and the spam will disappear all at once. At work this cut my
daily spam time down from a half-hour to about five minutes.
Ben Fogelson lives in Oregon and writes for the Eugene Weekly. He's currently working on a
novel, "Peacock Farm," which Ken Kesey blessed shortly before he passed away.
[End Quote]
Reply With Quote