Fritz Allison

slm 521 sp03

3/8/03

spam elective

What is spam?

Spam is the electronic equivalent of junk mail. It is the e-mail that we receive, usually on a daily basis advertising products, websites, and programs that we did not solicit information about. Advertisers flood the Internet with same message to people who would otherwise choose not to receive this mail. Some of the topics that are sent in spam e-mails deals with chain letters, pyramid schemes, get rich quick schemes, phone sex, pornographic websites, health products, and illegally pirated software.

Why is spam a problem?

One reason that spam is a problem is that is could flood one's e-mail account. Eventually, if the amount of spam keeps increasing, it will make it difficult to read real e-mail because of the vast amount of spam we are receiving. Another problem with spam is that basically the person who receives the spam has to pay for it, such as those users with a dial-up account that pay for amount of time they are on the Internet. It takes time to get rid of the spam, so essentially they are paying to receive e-mail that they did not want in the first place. A lot of time and space is used on the servers when spam is sent, this can lead to increased costs for the server to operate, again regular users will have to pay the price for spam. Much of the spam that we receive is for fraudulous products or services, and some of the spam could even be for illegal materials, such as child pornography.

What can be done to fight spam?

1. Complain to the spammers provider: This may be more difficult than it sound because the people who send spam may do a good job to hide from where it was sent. Set your e-mail reader to include all of the received by lines and try to figure out what server the spammer used to send you the spam and send them a complaint about it.

2. Report spam: On sites such as spamcop you can register and report spam free of charge.

3. Filtering systems: There are e-mail filtering systems available that filter out the spam that is sent to you. One problem with a filter is that you will usually have to pay a fee for this service. We should not have to pay to have something removed that we did not want in the first place.

4. Try to hide your e-mail address from spammers: There are programs available, such as the ones on E-mail Countermeasures where users can go to encrypt their e-mail address so that spammers cannot read it.

5. Do not reply to the "remove my name from mail list":

Although this may be tempting, it will not stop the spam from being sent to you. Again, this is something that we should not have to do when we did not want the e-mail in the first place. By doing this, it could also verify to other spammers that you have a valid e-mail address and actually increase the amount of spam.

The spamabuse website offers a much larger selection of links and sites that can help a user to fight spam.

What can government do to fight spam?

Government can help the problem of spam by passing some laws that better regulate the spam that is sent. There is currently no federal legislation concerned with spam, there have been bills introduced but none of them have been passed. There are currently 26 states that have passed legislation concerning spam. The majority of the laws prohibit the sending of bulk e-mails via a third party without notification, or from sending them with missing or false routing information. A summary of each of the state laws can be found on the spamlaws website. One thing that we can do to help the government fight any spam that may be illegal is to contact them when you get questionable spam. There is a list of agencies on the spamabuse page where you report such activity. Agencies such as this have been fighting to get anti-spam laws passed; you can join groups such as CAUCE to help.