That damn spam
Unsolicited E-mail has become the bane of many corporations
The issue's complexity is clear in the torment of another Internet provider, Alexis Rosen, CEO of New York City's Panix.com. He rails against spam, which eats up 12 percent to 15 percent of his gross revenues to pay for antispam systems, people to run them, and customer service reps to handle spam-related complaints. At the same time, he opposes potential remedies like forcing E-mail senders to identify themselves, which antispam activists say is crucial to stemming the tide. "Anonymous speech is an essential part of democracy," Rosen says.
It's easy to disguise the origins of a message. Anyone can change the "From" field of an E-mail to mask an identity; sophisticated spammers further cover their tracks by bouncing messages through the servers of companies that are good citizens, if sloppy about computer security. Engineers are looking at reworking the Internet's plumbing to counter spam, but those changes could take years to implement, even if they get past free-speech concerns. Likewise for any legislative remedy.
So the burden falls on Internet providers, whether ISPs for consumers or corporations for employees. Surprisingly, most company networks don't have antispam software yet, as the problem at the workplace escalated dramatically only in the past year. In their search for valid E-mail addresses, spammers began "harvesting" company directories by sending E-mails to randomly generated letters in front of domains (such as jsmith @xyzcompany.com). Messages that don't bounce back indicate valid names, which are sold to other spammers.
Tricky. Meantime, the spammers constantly change their wording to fool early, text-based filters. The FTC sued last week to shut down a Web site it said was using deceptive subject lines such as "wanna hear a joke" when messages actually contained embedded images of nude women. Adult-oriented messages have increased dramatically in the past year, making ordinary citizens uncomfortable, parents enraged, and companies open to charges of hostile work environments. Attorneys now warn companies they may need to prove they've tried to block porn if a disgusted employee decides to sue.
One result of the spam onslaught is a rush to create software to combat it, much as network administrators raced to protect themselves against viruses several years ago. More than 40 companies, mostly small, now sell antispam tools, which range from simple text filters to multilayered packages that calculate the probability a message is unwanted and check blacklists and even white lists, through which a company would accept all E-mail from certain domains. Big security vendors also are releasing their first significant fixes. Symantec, for example, last month introduced a suite of antispam software for network administrators. "Everybody wants to get into the game," says Maurene Caplan Grey of market researcher Gartner.
Like viruses, which remain a danger but whose ravages have receded dramatically from the days of "Melissa" and "ILOVEYOU," spam will be solved, analysts say. Grey says corporate networks could get over the hump by the middle of next year. Others say it will take somewhat longer, particularly for ISPs, which will require a combination of technology and legislation to finesse issues of access and free speech. For example, ISPs might need sophisticated software that gives users more control over which E-mails are barred. "Users at least need to know what's been filtered and why," says Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group. EarthLink agrees and is readying a tool that puts a message on hold until the sender proves he or she is not a spammer's software robot by replying to an EarthLink-generated query. Or recipients can see which missives are quarantined, freeing the ones they choose.
So figure three years, maybe five, for controlling spam as a whole, says Marten Nelson of Ferris Research. Eventually, so much will get blocked that Nelson predicts spammers won't get a return on even their small investments: "Antispam vendors will win the arms race."
Spamalanche
It Adds Up
Amount of spam as a percentage of all E-mail messages:
2000 4 pct.
2001 15 pct.
2002 41 pct.
2003 45 pct.*
Source: Brightmail
*As of March 2003
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