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Fighting Spam

Possibly one of the greatest scourges of the Internet is unsolicited email, more commonly known as SPAM. Never before has it been so cheap and easy to pitch the latest magic potion or financial scheme to millions of people. The appeal of SPAM from the creators standpoint is that they need such a low percentage of people to respond to make it worth it that it is tough to run a bad SPAM campaign. People are fighting back though and I will tell you what some of the things you can do as a consumer or a businessperson to help stop the spread of SPAM. According to the FTC,

"Open relays and open proxies are servers that allow any computer in the world to "bounce" or route e-mail through servers of other organizations, thereby disguising the real origin of the e-mail. Spammers often abuse these servers to flood the Internet with unwanted e-mail"(1).

If you operate a mail server the easiest way to fix this problem is require authentication for any computer wishing to use your mail server. Now this doesn't really apply to the average home user. For you I offer the following tips:
Never open email you are sure is spam
Forward SPAM directly to spam@uce.gov
Never buy anything from an unsolicited email even if it is legitimate this is the sale that makes it worthwhile for the spammer
If you must post your email somewhere public make it more difficult for spammers to access by replacing the @ with a+ or something else of this nature

As personal and corporate citizens we must push the government to continue its efforts in going after the people responsible for this spam. According to a recent article in M&C, in a recent case a Man in the Netherlands was fined $97,000 dollars for sending nine billion spam emails that earned him an estimated profit of $52,000 dollars(2). While this may seem relatively low amount at less than a fraction of a penny for each email sent it represents almost double what he earned and will hopefully serve as a deterrent to other would be spammers.

In another case, according to an Associated Press article reported in the San Jose Mercury News, a San Diego man plead guilty in a spamming case where he now faces up to three years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000(3). The key here is to make sure that he gets a fitting punishment to serve as an example to others that might be thinking about entering the spam for profit business.

While I don't think we will ever be able to eliminate spam it is important that we do everything we can to lessen its effect on our lives. I personally would much rather spend my times working or with my family then hand filtering the daily horde of spam that invades my inbox. The only for this to happen is for everyone to do their part.

(1) US Federal Trade Commission, "FTC and International Agencies Announce "Operation Secure Your Server"." Federal Trade Commission. 29 Jan 2004. United States Federal Trade Commission. 10 Feb 2007 .
(2) Ragan, Steve. "Nine-billion-spam emails earns $97,000 fine." m&c 07 Feb 2007 08 Feb 2007 .
(3) Associated Press, "Man pleads guilty in San Diego spam e-mail case." The Mercury News 08 Feb 2007 08 Feb 2007 .

Learn more about this author, Dan Schlueter.
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