John Haney

Slm 521

April 11, 2003

Spam elective

What is Spam?

Spam or, unsolicited commercial e-mail, is the unwanted junk mail that most of us receive on a daily basis. The some of the topics are chain letters, pyramid schemes, get rich quick schemes, phone sex lines and pornography web sites, stock offerings, health products and remedies, and illegally pirated software. Advertisers send out hundreds of thousands of messages an hour, causing us all a headache and costing us money.

Why is Spam a Problem?

Spam costs us time and money to get rid of. With dial-up Internet connection, like I have, you pay for the amount of time that you are on the Internet. Deleting spam costs us time and consequently, we pay for more time. If you have a small amount of space available for e-mail, spam can flood and fill you e-mail account. This could cost you an extra charge, or cause you to buy a larger mail box. Internet Service Providers pay for bandwidth usage. Spam vastly multiplies this usage, causing the ISP to buy a larger bandwidth, and pass the cost along to you, the customer. With the amount of spam being sent, valuable e-mail may be slowed or lost while trying to sift through all that junk. A lot of the spam being sent is for scams and other fraudulent services. Spammers disguise the origin of their messages to combat filters set up to stop them. All this costs money and slows down the Internet. It also makes e-mail a less effective and useful communication tool. There is also the annoyance factor. Your e-mail account is yours, and you should have control over it.

What Can Be Done?

1. Report spam. Spamcop has free and pay services to register and report spam.

2. Reply to the message with your own message stating your unhappiness with the spammer. Be sure to sound like a potential customer. There is a good example of this on the Death to Spam website.

3. Use the TraceRoute function in DOS to find out were the spam really came from.

4. Call the 800, 888, and 877 numbers listed back. The owner of the number gets billed, not you. Call after hours and leave a very long and expensive message for them.

5. Under the United States telecommunication law, it is technically illegal to send someone unsolicited advertising. You may be able to sue for $500 or damages, which ever is greater. Go to Death to Spam to find out more.

6. Use a mail filter. You will probably have to pay for this, but it could save you lots of time deleting spam.

7. Create a free e-mail account at Yahoo! or Hotmail. Use this e-mail address when you are required to provide an e-mail address to a web page. When it fills with spam, abandon it and create a new one.

8. Do not reply to “remove my name from mail list.” It will not stop spam from being sent to you and my actually increase the amount of spam you receive by letting other spammers know that you have a valid e-mail address.

What Can the Government Do?

The government can pass laws regulating the way spam is sent. Currently there are 26 states that have passed spam legislation. If you are in one of these states you can take legal action. There are also agencies that are fighting to get anti-spam legislation passed. You can join CAUCE to help do your part.