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Spam: potted meat or annoying commercial emails By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on Jan. 29, 2004, in the Bay Mills News.
Be they advertisements for second mortgages, cheap prescription drugs, spying tools, pornography websites or even offers for e-mail lists for spamming, unsolicited e-mails are one of the biggest annoyances that have developed since the inception of the Internet. It all started simply enough. Back in the early days when e-mail was rare and message boards were popular (that term being relative, since the number of people in question is minuscule compared to Internet users today), users would occasionally post the same message to many boards. Those reading the boards, especially those that subscribed to several boards, would get treated to many copies of the same message.
The multiple identical message headers appearing on the boards reminded the users, many who were Monty Python fans, of a skit that featured a waitress reciting a menu to a hapless customer — a menu that was almost entirely composed of Spam. The moniker stuck within this sub-culture, but the problem was still small. Few people knew of the message boards, mainly because access was generally limited to technology-based businesses and academic institutions and the topics were often highly technical. But as the information superhighway was opened to the average user, the crooks, cons and wretched vermin saw a virgin opportunity to fleece hundreds, then thousands, then millions of new Internet users. Since the new preferred form of communication was e-mail, it was also the preferred target. The mode of attack may be new, but the type of people that stoop to attempt to make a quick buck on the gullibility of the general populace are not. Charlatans like this have been around for centuries. The front page of the June 30, 1863 Gettysburg newspaper announcing the arrival of Confederate troops also contained advertisements offering miracle tonics. Nowadays, many people look at spam messages as a minor annoyance, like television commercials or junk mail. However, many are not aware of the significant underlying problem that spam creates. To illustrate, let's consider junk mail: It is similar to spam, in that it arrives in mass quantities, it is usually unsolicited, and it is hard to avoid receiving. However, the people and organizations that send junk mail pay for the privilege to do so, and even though the amount they pay is small per item sent, junk mail is a major reason why we pay only 37 cents per letter mailed and not $1.50. Since there is no postage on the Internet and e-mail systems are relatively simple and decentralized, spammers can send hundreds of thousands of messages at very low cost. The spammers can spam cheaply because we, the Internet users, actually bear the cost of the “privilege” of being spammed. For example, during the week of Jan. 11, 2004, at BMIC.net, 248,717 e-mail messages were sent to the Bay Mills domain. Of that amount, only 19,465 messages were legitimate e-mails. Put another way, for every real message sent to BMIC addresses, there were an average of 11.8 spam messages sent along with it. Fortunately, we do not see most of the spam because Charles Holbrook in the Bay Mills IT Department has implemented spam filters that block the offending messages. While this is a good thing, the task of filtering takes time away from more critical tasks and spam takes up storage space and increases Internet traffic, slowing the system down. Further complicating the issue is that much of the spam we receive now comes in from overseas, using bogus e-mail addresses and hijacked computer systems. This makes the task of tracking and stopping the perpetrator very difficult. Chosen at random from the spam received at the Bay Mills News, one message trying to hock cheap Viagra, when analyzed, was found to have been sent from a French e-mail address and routed through a German computer. The mesage advertised a website registered in China and hosted in Uruguay. One could say that spam is a worldwide conspiracy. What can be done? There is no single answer to the problem. Internet infrastructure changes are rumored to be in the works to stop spamming, but these changes will take time and will cost a lot of money. Government regulation will not be the answer (it rarely is) since the problem crosses many borders. Even the almighty United Nations, which is now contemplating taking over governance of the Internet, will likely fumble in the face of the e-mail onslaught. Therefore, it falls to us, the Internet users, to stem the tide of junk e-mail. This issue's Tip of the Week has simple yet effective methods for reducing the amount of spam invading inboxes. While no solution is perfect, the last thing we should do is surrender to the problem. Hopefully, with a little perseverance, there will be a day when our e-mail is not clogged with garbage, and spam will only be known as Spam. • Mike Guilmette is a staff reporter/columnist with the Bay Mills News. His website can be seen at http://www.sigperl.com/. |
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Copyright © 2004, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
John Potter's last column that appeared in the Bay Mills News dealt with Spam, and interestingly enough, this column deals with Spam as well. Not the potted meat product that we have come to know and ... love, but the kind that floods e-mail inboxes worldwide — that's right, I'm talking about unsolicited commercial e-mails.
