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A SECOND HELPING OF SPAM
Does it seem like you’re getting more and more spam in your e-mail in-box every day? You probably are.

In the October 2000 CyberNews column, I cited a Gartner Group estimate placing the number of e-mail messages sent worldwide that qualify as junk mail, or spam, at one in 10. More recent estimates place that number between 30 and 50 percent. Jupiter Media Metrix, an Internet research firm, estimates that by 2006, the average Internet user can expect to receive nearly 1,500 pieces of electronic junk mail annually.

All of that spam is more than just annoying. In a January 2001 report to the Commission of the European Communities on unsolicited commercial communications, the bandwidth charges to Internet users worldwide accruing from downloading spam were estimated at up to $10 billion. The report also cited research concluding that the average e-mail user could spend more than two hours per year identifying and deleting unwanted junk e-mail.

One might conclude there are a lot of people out there trying to make a living by soliciting business through mass e-mailings. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case. According to the Spamhaus Project, an organization that works with Internet service providers and law enforcement agencies to crack down on spam, about 100 large spamming operations—many with criminal records for fraud or theft—are responsible for more than 90 percent of American and European junk e-mail.

For anyone who is interested in the spamming business, getting started is simple enough. Software tools that can send messages to thousands of people at a time and mask reply addresses can easily be found for purchase online for less than $100. Subscription lists of open relay servers—insecurely configured machines that can be used to send mail anonymously—also are quite easy to find. A search for "bulk mailing lists" turns up many links for companies selling CD-ROM collections of e-mail addresses and software to harvest addresses from the Web.

Dealing with spam today is just as difficult as it was two years ago. Several antispam bills have been introduced in Congress, but as of this writing (September), there still was no federal legislation on unsolicited commercial e-mail. Filtering software for e-mail client programs has improved but still cannot catch all junk mail. Other tricks such as using several e-mail accounts to keep spam out of your main in-box, switching e-mail addresses periodically and using number and letter combinations for addresses can be somewhat effective.

If you’d like to take a more proactive approach, you can report spam to your Internet service provider and to the ISP through which it was sent. This latter route requires a bit more effort, since you will need to examine the junk mail’s header information to find its source. For more information about how to report spam, visit the Network Abuse Clearinghouse Web site at "www.abuse.net" or go to "SpamCop.net".

If all of this seems like too much trouble, there’s another simple solution for dealing with unwanted e-mail messages: select them and click "Delete."

Reported by Joe Hoyle, electronic media editor, "hoylej{at}ada.org".

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