Is spam here to stay? Trying to clear your e-mail “Inbox” or in “Bulk folder” of spam can feel like trying to shovel snow while it’s still snowing. Hotmail and Yahoo users can expect spam to account for up to 80% of their daily messages. Collectively, subscribers receive more than 1 billion pieces of junk e-mail a day, and that doesn’t include mail blocked by Hotmail’s first line of filters.
Hotmail reports utilizing various tools to prevent the bothersome mail but are still unable to prevent all of them from sneaking under the wire. “And it’s increasing everyday,” Parul Shah, a product manager with Microsoft Corp., which runs Hotmail told the Associated Press (AP). “Every time Hotmail, Yahoo or another e-mail servece provider finds a way to detect spam, the spammer immediately has a way to get around that.”
Many Internet users have been deterred from using e-mail due to the spamming problem. The annoyance is mostly legal unless it makes fraudulent claims, and attempts to block the messages sometimes block legitimate mail. Service providers have also felt obliged to purchase equipment to deal with the problem.
The AP reported that at AT&T WorldNet 2 or 3 years ago, about a dozen out of every 100 messages were spam. Today, it’s closer to 20 or 25 on top of another 200 or 300 e-mails sent to invalid accounts by spammers trying to guess addresses. The increase is due, in part, to improved filters blocking more messages, which in turn, have prompted spammers to retaliate by sending a greater volume of messages to get some of them through.
E-mail marketers only pay less than a penny per pitch marking it a cheap method of advertising. Telemarketing runs $1 a pitch, and direct mail costs around 75 cents, according to the anti-spam group-SpamCon Foundation. Each time ISP’s, and internet users find a way to avoid the nuisance; spammers find a way around it.
When e-mailers smartened up, and learned to avoid using real e-mail address in news group postings, spammers simply reacted by using dictionary attacks, such as : Send messages to “scott 31, ” “scott32,” “scott33″ @ common domain names like msn.com or yahoo.com in an effort to hit a few correctly guessed addresses. When service providers blocked mail based on phrases like “Viagra” and “$$$$$”, programs were used so that those looking at the mail saw “Viagra” or “$$$$$”, but the computer saw it as random code.
Some spammers simply used images, preventing filters from analyzing their content. Marketers have stopped to appearing sympathetic by including fake removal requests links, or sending mail that seems to come from a friend by adding, “Susan thought you might need this,” in the subject line.
The internet even includes sites that sell address for a bulk price. Other products available hide the origin of the sender by altering e-mail message headers. Spammers have defended their practice as a method to provide the “little guy” with an advertising option against the fancy campaigns of big corporations. Blaming anti-spam vigilantes for forcing them to use underhanded techniques to advertise.
Individual users have had their fill of the mail, and many have banned their children from using e-mail. Others have changed address so often that friends are unable to keep up with the correct address, and many newcomers to the internet have closed accounts after only a couple of months.
According to the AP, While the first half-billion Internet users have become dependent on e-mail, “many of the next two billion may decide the Internet is not worth the trouble,” John Patrick, chairman of the industry supported Global Internet Project, said at a recent conference on spam. The problem has now extended to developing technologies.
European cell phone users have been inundated with text messages sent by spammers guessing at phone numbers. “A lot of people will be hesitant to use non-voice applications if they are threatened by the same kind of spam they now face in desktops,” Raimund Trierscheid of Deutsche Telekom’s mobile unit told the AP.
Companies sending legitimate bills, newsletters and messages are having trouble getting their messages to customers. For example, the AP reported that earlier this year, the Web site MacSlash.com temporarily lost its domain name when a renewal notice got rejected as spam, while filters at AT&T Broadband inadvertently blocked its own notice or a rate increase.
While some service providers have successfully sued some of the most active spammers, it has done little to deter others. Though half the states in the US have laws to prohibit such mass mailings, they are difficult to enforce, and spammers have simply looked to the foreign markets as a reprieve.
Sued by Verizon Communications for millions of dollars, spammer Alan Ralsky said he may simply move beyond the reach of U.S. courts to where service provider’s value cash more than complaints. “I think China is good place to be,” Ralsky told the AP. “You don’t get the same kind of grief.”
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