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y spam. Another thirty-nine percent
admit to clicking on spam links even if
they don’t actually buy the goods. Thus,
the business case for a spam operation is
clear – send out millions of messages (or
ads) at very low cost, and expect a high
conversion rate of paying customers.
Although spam is indeed an appealing
business from the spammer perspective,
it is one of the greatest annoyances to e-
mail users in general, creating immense
losses in productivity costs. In the last few
years, despite significant efforts to fight
spam, spam volume actually increased to
above seventy-five percent of all e-mail
traffic. Another ten percent is composed of
phishing attempts (scams imitating known
brands to fool users into giving their
account details) and viruses aiming to
create bot networks of zombie computers
to facilitate spam sending. According to
the 2004 National Technology Readiness
Survey (NTRS), online users in the United
States spend an average of three minutes
deleting spam each time they check e-mail.
Aggregating their usage across the 169.4
million online adults in the United States,
this equals 22.9 million hours a week, or
$21.58 billion annually when based on the
average working wage.
Fighting
Spam with Filters
The technology industry has been
waging war on spam for a few years.
Spam filters are the most established
technical solutions in the market. Filters
are a passive means of defense, analyzing
incoming messages and separating the
spam from legitimate messages. As a
result, spammers are constantly coming
up with ways to bypass them.
While filters may alleviate some of the
problem for end users that can afford them,
they introduce their own set of problems.
Being an automatic sorting technology,
filters suffer from false identification of
spam and legitimate e-mails. If a spam
e-mail passes through the filter (known
as a false negative), the user must waste
time in seeing the message and deleting
it. If a legitimate e-mail is tagged as
spam, and does not reach the intended
recipient (known as a false positive), the
result is a lost business or communication
opportunity. In general, filters reduce e-
mail reliability as an effective business
communication tool.
Unfortunately, filtering does not impact
the spam economy, but rather encourages
spammers to innovate and invent new
means to bypass filtering schemes. In
addition, spammers are inclined to send
even more spam since they know that a
large percentage of their traffic is blocked
by filters.
Fighting
Spammers in Court
In January 2003, the US government
stepped forward and enacted the CAN-
SPAM Act. The Act defined the guidelines
for sending unsolicited commercial e-
mails, such as including a valid return
address and providing a working, opt-out
link in each message. The CAN-SPAM act
also outlawed certain spammers practices,
such as address harvesting and the use of
“zombies” for sending mail.
Almost three years after CAN-SPAM
was passed, it has not done much to stop
spam, although several industry giants,
such as AOL and Microsoft, have been
aggressively bringing spammers to court
for CAN-SPAM infringements. Microsoft
won a $7M settlement from Scott Richter,
a man known as one of the world’s most
prolific spammers. AOL even ran a spam
sweepstakes among its members, sharing
the money it was awarded by the court in
its lawsuits.
Legal efforts to bring spammers to court
do impact the spam economy, at least for
those spammers affected directly. However,
the number of spammers brought to court
is very small. In general, anti-spam laws
are extremely hard to enforce due to the
global nature of the internet and spam
operations.
Registry and
Opt-Out Solutions
Before there was spam, there were
telemarketing calls. When the annoyance
was too much, the US government
stepped in and created the “Do Not Call”
registry. Now people had a choice – they
could join the registry and stop receiving
telemarketing calls altogether, or they
could opt-in and continue to receive
commercial calls. In a similar line of
thought, the CAN-SPAM Act called for
creating a national do-not-spam registry,
created to stop spammers from sending
spam to registered e-mail addresses. It was
later decided that such a registry would
not be enforceable by the government, and
thus would not serve its purpose.
Taking the lead on this initiative, some
companies, such as Blue Security, have
created commercial “Do Not Disturb”
registry-based solutions. Other companies,
such as LashBack Technologies, have taken
the “Safe unsubscribe” approach, allowing
users to automatically unsubscribe from
those spammers that are likely to honor
such request.
E-mail Payment Systems
And, finally, there are those who tout
using a stamp-like system for e-mail. There
are a number of variations on this idea,
including making senders pay for e-mails
rejected by their recipients, or paying for e-
mails with computational power. However,
these ideas have not matured enough to
gain widespread industry support.
How Will
This Battle End?
Analyzing the way spammers work, it is
clear a new approach is required to solve
the spam problem. We need to change the
spam equation and raise the cost of sending
spam. Tying the cost of sending spam to
the number of recipients will ensure that
spammers diligently clean their list of those
who do not want to receive spam offers in
their e-mail. Eventually, we’ll reach a point
where spammers will send advertisements
to the approximately twenty percent of the
population that actually buys from them.
The rest of us will be able to reclaim our
internet experience and enjoy spam-free e-
mail once again. Only time will reveal the
outcome of this battle – but, let’s hope it is
not the spammers who prevail!P!
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