Rage against spam!
Spam is an outrage!
During the last year we've highlighted many examples of gross inequity and injustice in the world. Now it's time to do something about one of them.
Alas, we're not in a position to wage an effective war against many of our targets; the Trial Lawyers Association, bureaucrats, and international tyrants are, for the moment, beyond the reach of justice. We don't care to be the Don Quixote of the Internet.
But there is a less dramatic, but very irritating problem we think we can do something about: spam. While the problem of unsolicited bulk e-mail will probably never be completely solved, we think we can, at the very least, help The Outrage readers greatly diminish spam.
As you probably know, spam is the commonly-used term to describe unsolicited bulk e-mail: those messages that fill your inbox promising get-rich-quick schemes, HOT SEX, and other irritating come-ons. Spam is most often used for commercial purposes, but also included within this category are those who add names to political or other mailing lists without the consent of the recipient.
Unlike telephone solicitations or"snail" junk mail (junk mail sent through the U.S. Postal Service), spam costs virtually nothing to send, making it ideal for those who want to reach a large audience and don't care who they irritate. Imagine pushing a button and having a recorded message sent to one million telephones at dinner time and you'll understand spam. (But
spam is more than just an irritation -- see below for more reasons to strongly oppose spam.)
Spam has always been considered a violation of Netiquette, the set of accepted standards of behavior on the World Wide Web. But there are those to whom standards and privacy means nothing.
Of course, many legitimate organizations send mass mailings. The Outrage goes to thousands of subscribers. The key difference is this: have people asked to be included on a mailing list, or is the mailing being sent to them without their consent? If the mailing is unsolicited AND in mass quantities, then it's spam.
Reader comments on spam
Reasons to hate spammers!
Consumers hate unsolicited bulk e-mail because:
Wastes Time
1. It's very irritating going through your mail and having to weed through and delete all the get-rich-quick, pornographic, and other offers from people who shouldn't have your e-mail address. The most scarce resource is increasingly peoples' time and attention -- and none of us can afford to have it ripped off by spammers.
It's Offensive
2. Quite a bit of the spam is offensive to a wide variety of people. Spam is sent to thousands, sometimes millions of people at a time. Sexual sites offering nude photos are received by nuns and children. Often profanity and obscenity is used in the subject line -- making it virtually impossible to avoid.
Increases Download Time
3. If you don't have a fast modem, or if it's been a while since you checked your e-mail, spam can make the retrieval of e-mail a very slow and irritating process.
Slower E-mail
4. Every piece of e-mail you receive and send goes through the system more slowly because of the millions of pieces of spam choking the Internet network. Whether an e-mail message takes minutes or hours to reach its destination, it would have gotten there a little faster in a spam-free system.
Destroys Legitimate E-Mail Services
5. Services like The Outrage that send mail to subscribers may be destroyed by the rising tide of spam (See Below).
Destroy or Greatly Diminish the Net Entirely
6. Imagine what would happen if you received a piece of junk mail in your inbox from every company on earth -- and the mail was sent to you every day. The only reason this does not currently happen is the restraint exercised by most business people. Sending spam costs the sender almost nothing -- all they need is a list of e-mail addresses and spam software, both of which can be bought very cheaply.
It is not difficult or expensive to send spam to a million different people -- and that same piece of spam could be sent every day forever -- at virtually no additional cost to the sender.
There is the potential for spam to completely overwhelm the network, and for so much to end up in your mailbox as to make e-mail virtually worthless. Don't think this is impossible -- spam helped ruin many once-thriving Usenet communities. Don't let it happen again.
Accidental Filtering
7. As Internet Service Providers try to filter spam on behalf of their customers, many legitimate messages get filtered out. An ISP will often halt all mail coming from a particular domain in order to stop spamming originating within that domain. The unfortunate
side effect is legitimate email being sent from users within that domain will also be filtered out. In other words, if an ISP screens out a spammer using the juno domain, no e-mail from juno users can get to customers of that ISP.
WHY WEB PUBLISHERS HATE SPAM!
Lose Advertising
1. Most web publishers are coming to the realization that people won't be willing to pay for content for quite some time, if ever. So, like radio and TV, publishers will be completely dependent on advertising.
But if spammers can get away with sending advertising to people who don't want it, at no cost to the spammers, the legitimate business of selling advertising space on the web will be destroyed, or at least greatly diminished. Publishers with no market for advertising will be forced out of business.
Spamming Publishers Gain Advantage
2. An ethical publisher would never try to gain exposure or new subscribers by spamming. Unfortunately, there are many who are not ethical, and try to increase their readership by sending spam to millions of e-mail addresses. The vast majority of people are irritated by this spam. But the spammer always gains a few new subscribers.
The irritation of the vast majority causes the publisher no harm, and they pick up new subscribers at very small cost. In this way unethical publishers who violate the widely accepted rules on netiquette gain a competitive advantage over those who don't spam.
Slows Down Mailings to Subscribers
3. Webzines like The Outrage deliver daily e-mail to thousands of subscribers who have signed up for such mail. If you haven't gotten today's DO, it's probably on its way, but slowed down in the spam-filled network.
Crowds Mail Boxes
4. One of the most frequent complaints of web users is that their mail box is too crowded. In fact, as spam increases, it's possible that people simply won't be willing to dig through the huge piles of spam to retrieve mailings they have signed up for.
Must Read Spam
5. Publishers like The Outrage really value the interaction with their readers made possible by e-mail. But, without looking at the message, a publisher can not always tell whether it is from a legitimate reader or a spammer. For instance, the subject
line "Hi" is often used by spammers. It is also often used by readers commenting on The Outrage. Publishers are thus forced to either ignore potential reader comments or waste valuable time sifting through spam.
This is also a very serious problem for other net businesses, especially those that provide support services. If you're wondering why you haven't heard back from your ISP regarding the e-mail you sent, they're probably busy sorting through hundreds of daily e-mails, many of them spam.
Removal From Mailing Lists
6. Consumers can sometimes, but not always, be removed from mailing lists by inserting remove in the subject line and sending the mail back to the spammer. This does not work for publishers, who are often using e-mail aliases. For instance, when
you send mail to editor@theoutrage.com it is routed to the editor's personal e-mail box, along with other mail. Anyone with multiple e-mail addresses must go through the time-consuming task of trying to figure
out which address the spam is being sent to -- a sometimes impossible task. In any event, the removal option is often a scam and does not result in being removed from a mailing list.
The Spam King by Tom Raynor
If you are outraged about junk e-mail, otherwise known as "spam," then you are especially outraged at Sanford Wallace, President of Cyber Promotions, Inc.
For anyone who hasn't heard that name already, let me explain. He has adopted a nickname that was originally given him by his most bitter opponents: "Spamford." He also seems to enjoy going by the title "The Spam King." (Those of us in SPAM-L prefer to call him "Spammy".) He virtually created the concept of junk e-mail, and continues to openly promote it, in flagrant disregard for the disgust virtually all netizens hold for him. Losing dozens of lawsuits, even being repeatedly kicked off Internet Service Providers (ISP's) after complaints by outraged customers, has done nothing to diminish his support of junk e-mail.
Where did he come from? How did it all begin? Where is he going? Let's start at the beginning.
Before there was junk e-mail, and before there was Cyber Promotions, there was a company called Promo Enterprises. This, too was owned by Mr. Sanford Wallace. You probably never heard of him or his business back then, but I'm sure you heard about what Promo Enterprises was doing: sending junk faxes.
It was in all the papers. He was extremely aggressive, and refused to stop, even when the owners of the fax machines being targeted became outraged at him. He claimed he was doing nothing illegal, and therefore nothing wrong. He didn't care how many people were unable to use their fax machines while his junk was spewing out, nor how much of their money he wasted in fax paper and toner.
The only way these outraged business people were able to regain control of their own fax machines was to pressure congress to pass a law, 47 USC 227. This was a carefully-worded law that allowed recipients of unsolicited commercial faxes to sue for damages. It worked. Promo Enterprises was, for all appearances, out of business.
But that didn't last long. Soon, home computers and home e-mail became popular. Popular enough for Mr. Wallace to see a new pool of suckers to target. People without the political clout of his former business-backed opponents with the fax machines. People who could be easily forced to waste their time, equipment and money receiving his junk advertising messages.
His first targets were AOL customers; a growing but not yet computer-savvy group who were the least technically able to exact revenge. In a later court case, Mr. Wallace was to beg for an injunction allowing him to continue sending his junk through AOL's computers, claiming that he'd go bankrupt immediately otherwise. (He lost in the end, but he was able to stall the case long enough to devise sneaky ways around the AOL blocking).
It was around this time that I had an opportunity to speak with Mr. Wallace by phone. My naive intent was to register a complaint with a company whose product (junk e-mail) I found offensive. Instead, I was sworn at, berated, threatened with being mail-bombed, and at one point told that "The authorities are on their way over to pick you up now." That last threat was a reference to the fact that I was calling his toll-free number. It seemed Mr. Wallace was outraged over the fact that I was wasting HIS time, equipment and money!
At the time, I was more amused by the irony of that statement than concerned about the threat. But I was later to find out that it was a good thing I had not given him my name or e-mail address, as he had repeatedly demanded. Others who have confronted him have reported having their systems crashed by repeated e-mailings, or having junk e-mail sent to millions of disgusted users with the "from" line forged to the complainant's address.
After this, Mr. Wallace went on the offensive, both on the Internet and in court, taking on AOL and losing, taking on Compuserve and losing, being kicked off one ISP after another, often taking them to court, and always losing.
But, through loss after loss, he remained defiant. He went on a domain-naming spree, registering domain names with every possible combination of letters and numbers that even resembled "Cyber Promotions," along with names containing the words "first amendment" and "rights," as if he'd somehow been the one who was being victimized! Each time junk from a new domain was
blocked by all the major ISP's, he'd switch to another. And the junk kept flowing.
Now, he's working to develop his own ISP, one that not only allows junk e-mail, but encourages it. He has branched out to selling the software needed to send junk e-mail, and instructions on using the dirty tricks he developed to avoid being blocked. He also sells lists of e-mail addresses to other junk e-mailers.
By now you should realize that Mr. Wallace is not going to be persuaded by social pressure to stop sending junk e-mail. There is, however, one thing that even he admits will stop him cold.
It worked before, and it can work again. There is a move underway to amend the junk fax law. With the addition of a few words, it could apply just as easily to junk e-mail. With it, private citizens and businesses would regain control of their own time, money and equipment. This law has been tested, and found constitutional. It is so limited in scope that it cannot easily be abused by over-zealous government officials. It does NOT ban or restrict any kind of speech. All it does is allow computer owners to collect damages when their systems are used against their will to convey unsolicited, commercial e-mail.
Call or write your congressmen and women, and urge them to pass Rep. Smith's "Netizens' Protection Act of 1997" NOW!
For more information about fighting junk mail, including the complete texts of the junk fax law and junk e-mail bill, please visit the following sites:
Suggestions for fighting spam (from DO readers)
Phil McLane (pmclane@bigfoot.com) writes:
Idea: for those of us who aren't faced with the problem of not being able to identify the sender, simply reply with an attachment...say, a four-meg jpeg of your thumb...and fill up their quota, making them a pain in the neck to their isp ?
Now now, it might be fun, but what happens if the spam was forged in an innocent user's name? Denial of service attacks are NOT a good idea when dealing with spammers as it could affect other (innocent) users on his ISP. Visit http://spam.abuse.net/dontdo.html for a list of other things not to do.
R.L. Brown (rlbrown-at-ibm-dot-net) writes:
...those posting here are inviting spam by posting their e-mail addresses "in the clear." Spambot harvesters are known to read e-mail addresses from Web pages to add to their mailing lists. Disguise your e-mail address when you post it!
Oh, this is quite true. But is munging your address the best answer? It's only a matter of time until the programs that collect e-mail addresses are able to make use of munged addresses as well. Besides, this also serves to alienate newbies who don't understand how to munge their addresses and how to decode munged addresses.
Bill Koehler writes:
Those providers who don't cancel spammers should be made to suffer the consequences of these actions. Besides don't spammers hurt their ability to provide service? The free-market always provides a solution.
Yes, this is an idea that usually works, but this also affects innocent users and/or companies who are customers of that ISP. Furthermore, some ISP's, like AGIS, simply do not care and will continue to provide feeds to spammers.
bob@keyway.net (Bob Clevenger) writes:
Here is how I have drastically cut the amount of spam I see. I have set an e-mail kill filter to delete any e-mail that is not addressed to me either as a primary or secondary recipient. It works just fine.
An excellent idea if you only communicate with friends over the Internet. However, if you are on any mailing lists, your name won't show up in the To: or Cc: header, so implement this kind of filtering with caution.
Also, a drawback is that you still wasted your time downloading the spam, even if it was deleted immediately upon arrival on your system.
Chuck Cavanaugh writes:
I have a page about how I was attacked and driven off my former ISP by a spammer in Hong Kong. He sent me morethan 100,000 emails and subscribed me to thousands of mailing lists. None of the ISP's would/could do a thing about it.
Whoa, this is one webpage worth checking out. The URL is http://home.att.net/~sunfish5/bomb.htm. It's kinda scary that a spammer would do such a thing in order to silence a critic and that some of the ISP's involved (shame on you BBN Planet!) refused to provide any help or take any action.
Links to spamfighting sites
- http://spam.abuse.net - The Spam Boycott. This is the most complete site for the newbie, read this one first!
- http://www.cauce.org - The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail. We are trying to get spam outlawed by ammending the junk fax law to apply to e-mail as proposed in the Smith Bill. It's the least invasive and easiest to understand of the various spam bills in congress. Furthermore, it puts the power of enforcement in the users, not in the government.
- http://abuse.net/spam-l - The SPAM-L FAQ. This is the official FAQ for the SPAM-L mailing list. It contains lots of technical information on how to fight spam, such as how to see where a spamming site gets their connection from, as well as how to determine where forged e-mail came from. Information on how to join SPAM-L is also included.
- http://www-fofa.concordia.ca/spam/mail.html - Neil Schwartzman's Spam-news mailing list
- http://www.cybernothing.org/cno/docs/rfc1855.html - RFC 1855, an offical internet document that discusses netiquitte. Next time a spammer tries to tell you that he isn't doing anything wrong, point him here!
- http://host1.jmls.edu/cyber/cases/spam.html - A legal page which provides links to various court cases (and webpages about those cases) involving spam, such as the famous "AOL vs. Cyberpromo" case.
