Strangling the spammer in you

Surely, only the brain-dead would expect anyone to reply to an e-mail message they send out to millions, promising miraculous anatomical enhancement or a stake in an inherited fortune. C’mon now, you’d have to be a really really big-time sucker to shell out good money for something that seems too good to be true, right? So why then do spammers keep spamming? Fact is, there are quite a few really really big-time suckers in this world. And with the cost of spamming still infinitesimally low, all it takes is a few responses to make the spammer’s day.

You know that spam has reached the absolute nadir of decadence when you start getting flooded with spam urging you to buy anti-spam software! Yes, since the last time I wrote on this subject (in September 2002), a lot has happened. Things have deteriorated so much that one study (by anti-spam firm Brightmail) estimates that more than 40 percent of e-mail traffic today is spam. This is an alarming increase, more than double the percentage of a year ago—you’ve probably noticed it yourself too.

As spam begins to threaten the very viability of Internet e-mail, the various stakeholders—including e-mail software makers, ISPs, anti-spam software vendors and regulatory bodies—are sitting up and beginning to take serious collective notice. Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo recently announced that they would work together to make fundamental changes in the technical nature of e-mail so that it becomes easier to determine the real identity of the sender, with inherent tamper-proof credentials. Microsoft and AOL coming together for anything at all is big news in itself, and an indication of how severe the spam problem actually is. A great deal needs to be done before all e-mail clients and e-mail servers across all platforms work on the same anti-spam parameters, but at least a beginning has been made.

Laws regulating spam are sketchy and complicated in the few places they do exist, and it is extremely difficult to nail spammers, given the ease with which they can mask the location of their bulk-mailing presence. The CAN-SPAM Act, which makes it illegal to send mail using a false return e-mail address was recently re-tabled in the US Senate, but it’s widely considered to be a toothless tiger. France is one of the few countries with stringent anti-spamming laws, but recently the US Federal Trade Commission too has been moving to try and address the spam menace. It recently held a spam summit, and the proceedings have thrown up a host of potential solutions—many of which centre around changing the nature of e-mail so as to make the very cost of spamming prohibitive.

So, hopefully, all the above initiatives will put paid to most of the scam spam some day. But what of the legitimate bulk-mail, like mailing-lists, newsletters and special promos that you want to receive? Here, I think the most pragmatic approach is the double opt-in (where you don’t get recurring mail till you subscribe for the service and reply to a confirmatory mail), and you’re provided with an opt-out facility that’s honoured.

That leaves us to contend with the “serial forwarders”. I’m quite amazed that there are still so many of my friends, colleagues and associates who are proud of the fact that they keep sending me jokes, cartoons, feel-good inspirational stuff soaking in soppy sentimentality, and random kitschy krap. I’ve received forwarded mail from computer company CEOs, with the added ignominy of being one of 40 in the Cc list in addition to the forty thousand addresses already embedded in the previous iterations of the mail around the globe; bulky newsletters, replete with graphics and pictures, from industry associations; and, enormous press-release attachments from India’s leading software companies and PR agencies.

Inadvertent spammers, all. The cure-all “why don’t you just hit the delete button” may have been fine when the unwanted messages numbered five; it’s no salve when they’re now nearer 500.

No law can ever be enacted, nor technology developed, to rid the universe of this breed of well-meaning—but terribly annoying—inadvertent spammer. So instead, if you recognise yourself in this description, I’ll leave you with this gentle advice from a friend who in his superhero avatar goes by the name of ‘Anti-Forwarding Man’: “Think a thousand times before forwarding frivolous mail to everyone in your address book. They won’t be as thrilled as you think they would, to receive such impersonal mail from you. If you’re still convinced you’d like to share the stuff with them, select the relevant text—without existing e-mail addresses, headers and signatures—paste it in a new message, and add a personal note at the top, indicating why you’re sending them the included message. Most importantly, use the ‘Bcc’ option instead of ‘Cc’; this ensures that your entire contact list is not sent to each individual recipient, as well as making the message a wee bit more personal. As for the bulky attachments, any company or sender of newsletters that cannot instead provide just a summary along with a link to their website for retrieving the entire document, does not deserve to be in business.

“Strangle that inadvertent spammer in you!”

Val Souza, Editor
valsouza@expresscomputeronline.com