Spam Mania

By Michael L. Craner

[Authors Note:  This article was originally published last year, before the “great crash of ‘99”  At the editors suggestion we are re-releasing it for your information.  Most of the details remain true, although the problem with spam is now far worse than it was then.  Anyone with additional tips to help fight this menace is welcome to send email to mike@pencilstubs.com to share with the rest of us.]

Spam Mania

I would like to discuss the latest rage on the net. It’s called Spam. Now when I say rage, I mean RAGE! The following will be covered in this article.

·        What is Spam?

·        Why is Spam so popular if it is so despised?

·        Why should I care about Spam?

·        What can I do about Spam?

What is Spam?

Certainly this question has plagued us for years, however the Spam which this article is about is not the mystery meat we have all come to love, (or despise.)

Anyone with an email address is subject, and chances are you have already received Spam Mail. Spam is the unsolicited email that ends up in our inboxes, and is usually trying to sell us something or get us to join their multi-level marketing scam (MLM), oops, I mean Scheme, not Spam, er, scam. Anyway, that is all it is, just like the junk mail you get in your U.S. Post Office box almost daily: advertisements for this or that, coupons for savings, etc. We have lived with it for years and still the post office continues to place it in our mailboxes. No laws have been passed banning companies from sending you an advertisement to your post office box, why should there be any banning junk email? We will get to this further on, and you can decide for yourself.

I recently have been blocked from sending email to a domain because they felt that a personally written and addressed message to their sales department offering an advertising spot on this web site was Spam. I subscribe to and enjoy their service, and thought we could help them out while they helped us by giving them a banner spot on our site. After nearly a month without any kind of comment or response, I decided to write them again, this time to look into advertising on THEIR  site. Moments later I get a returned message stating that my message could not be delivered because my domain was blocked for sending Spam. That’s overreacting just a bit if you ask me, but it they don’t want my money, that doesn’t hurt me a bit.

Why is Spam so popular if it is so despised?

It doesn’t cost a company $0.33 to send you a Spam-mail. This is great for them, because they can reach a large audience for next to nothing. It obviously works or companies would not be fighting so hard to get the right to send it to you. Not only are they fighting for this right, they are also forging addresses to mask where the messages are originating, or illegally routing them through other servers.

Why should I care about Spam?

Several reasons, and the list is growing. First, they are annoying. But they don’t kill trees, and I can just delete them away into nothingness, right? Right, and that is what you should do. However, even those of us more mature not to get on a box and scream and cry about a few Spam messages, are still impacted on a much larger level.

Think of the internet as a water pipe system, where each terminal, PC, server, etc., are the spouts where the “water” is eventually released. Now the water is data, which translates to your web surfing, internet chats, and email messages. The bigger the pipe, the faster the water flows through them. Our pipes are not all that big considering that the number of users logging on to the Internet DOUBLES every 110 days. (A figure I was quoted in January 1999.) Every email message, every line of chat, WebPages, etc., fills these pipes for the moments they are being transmitted.

Every time a company releases 100,000 copies of a Spam message, it floods the entire internet, filling up the pipes. If this were somewhat useful, nobody would complain, but when you have your speed reduced to a crawl, so that 9900 people can get a message they will just delete without reading, you start to get upset.

It gets worse. Often times these companies get their mailing lists from outside sources, and a single bulk of this email may go to one domain, say for example, AOL. At the moment 100,000 messages hit AOL’s front door, NOTHING may come in or out until the domain can sort through the mail and deliver it to each user’s mailbox. (NOTE: These figures and using AOL are ONLY for example. They in no way represent actual figures or conditions at AOL, although the effect is pretty much the same.)

Now, Johnny can read, but he can’t get into the Library of Congress web site before his computer research period is over because someone filled up the water pipes with Spam, reducing his connection speed down to a crawl. Certainly there needs to be a lot of improvement and building up of the internet backbone and ISP’s, but this takes a lot of time and a lot of money, and we will be the ones who end up paying for it.

Remember above when I mentioned the reasons for caring about the use of Spam are growing? Recently the FCC announced that telephone companies may now charge long distance fees to ISP phone numbers. What this means is that although you may get unlimited hours on the Net for just $20.00 a month (also soon to change), but you will be charged long distance fees every minute you are connected to your ISP through your phone line.

This means that while you are waiting a minute or two for that really cool web page with all the really cool effects and pictures on it to download, you could be paying an additional $0.09 to $0.40 cents a minute. Now if the entire internet is slowed down even more because of useless Spam messages and chain letters, you will be paying even more. A lot more.

Kinda pisses you off, don’t it? Me too. Now perhaps you can understand why when you send me those cutesy little messages that tell me to send it to everyone I know, and back to the sender so they will know we are friends, I just delete the message and think to myself, “Gee, that was sure thoughtful of them.”

Here’s another thought. If the product they are pushing is legal and legit, why do they hide behind a number of addresses? Most of the Spam I get indicates it came from one provider, offers to un-subscribe you from their mailing list by sending an email to another provider, and either offers no direct communication through any provider, or does so from a third. This means they are dodging bullets. Not the kind of company you want to be “earning $100,000 a year” from, now is it?

What can I do about Spam?

First, quit sending those chain letters. If you want to show your friends that you care about them, write them a personal note, individually, and from the heart. They will appreciate and cherish them far more than being told to forward it to everyone they know or they will have rotten luck.

Second, when you get a Spam message, DELETE IT!  Do not reply to it.  DO NOT UNSUBSCRIBE from it. Many times this gets you put on ANOTHER mailing list as a confirmed valid email address.

Third, report it to the domain it was sent from, and your ISP. (This can be determined by examining the “From” address, which is made up of “username@domain.com” Go to your browser, and in the address bar, type “http://www.domain.com” and the domain name listed from the email. This will take you to their site, and with a bit of searching, you should be able to find a place to report the Spam.  If not, forward the message to the webmaster there. Be sure to tell them how unhappy you are and that you feel that any company like theirs who would condone such practice is not worth doing business with.)

Internet Explorer 5 which was released March 18^th, 1999, at one time had a Spam handler built into it where you could set Spam as you got it, to forward to a junk mail folder, to read or delete later without getting in your face in your inbox. This however was an issue recently taken to court against Microsoft from a greeting card company called “Blue Mountain Greeting Cards.” Their online greeting card announcements were getting filed off as junk mail and they got upset. Microsoft offered to work with them to resolve the problem, however they ignored and refused to assist Microsoft, but filed suit against them.  After the court got Microsoft to remove the feature from their new software, Blue Mountain used a simple fix provided by Microsoft, which enabled their mail to pass through the filters un-touched.

You can thank Blue Mountain for taking away your right and privilege of this new technology which would enable you to filter our those unwanted messages. Microsoft is currently appealing this ruling. For the under-informed, the Microsoft Internet Explorer software, and Outlook Express email software have always been free to use, and probably always will be. They also, in my humble opinion, provide a superior product above everyone else, for the Windows platforms. They continue to do so with the new release of Internet Explorer 5.

After downloading IE5 recently, I discovered that you have the ability to “block” senders of Spam, quickly and easily. A few hours after installing IE5 I had some unlucky spammer hit me again, so I “blocked” them. The way this works is you tell Outlook Express either the email address or domain of the offending message and from that point on any message from that domain or address is automatically moved to your deleted mail folder.  I also reported the offense to the Domain the message appeared to have come from. Upon reading the bit of fluff sent to me, this person had tried to justify the legality of their Spam by linking to a letter supposedly written by a Senator. In the Senators letter another email address was disclosed, said to be to the Federal Trade Commission who is seeking “examples” of unacceptable Spam to continue the battle.  So I forwarded the offending email off to the FTC, just in case. This is probably the BEST way to react to Spam, and now you have the links to respond to and help deal with these pesky buggers.

NOTE: In “cyberspace” things are not always as they appear. Just because a spammer says their Spam is legal does not mean it is. Just because they claim what they are selling is legal, doesn’t mean it is. Just because they direct you to some Senator’s letter, doesn’t mean the letter is current, or even written by a Senator or even posted on a Government site. However, don’t be discouraged, you should still follow the channels I have outlined above. If all else fails, you can lobby your ISP, and use software like that included in the Internet Explorer 5/Outlook Express 5 package to filter out and block Spam. If enough people threaten to leave an ISP because they do not have Spam filtering capability, you can bet they will get it. Currently the best blocking software I have heard of will only block the domain which the message first appears to be from. If this is a mask, you could be blocking an innocent party, and may not get any correspondence from them that you might actually want. However, if they don’t take it upon themselves to take legal action against those who are using them illegally, maybe you should block them anyway. At least that will put an end to your misery from THAT source.

There are many other programs out there that will assist you in weeding out the Spam that continuously bombards our inboxes, so be on the lookout for it, and listen to the news, because this is becoming a major issue and is being looked at quite hard.

Anyone with additional tips or who knows of good anti-Spam software is welcome to contact and advise me. I may even add your response to this article and re-release it.

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