Regulators: Spam e-mail problem far worse than first believed

San Jose Mercury News ^ | Fri, May. 02, 2003

[nickcarraway]

WASHINGTON (AP) -The volume of junk e-mail has reached a critical threshold that requires swift action to protect the Internet correspondence millions of people take for granted, regulators said today at the end of a three-day forum on ``spam.''

Harrington said that was the impression left by the dozens of technology experts, government officials, industry executives and lawyers who flocked to Washington to discuss the problem of unwanted commercial e-mail and what to do about it.

[martin_fierro]

It gets better:

(Cell phone) SPAM on its way to U.S.

[rgboomers]

Hasn't it always been said that if one wants less of something, the government should tax it? Why not tax all commercial bulk email at $.05? At the same time, leave ordinary private email alone. This could reduce the volume of spam.

Why not?

[Gorzaloon]

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, said this week she would seek federal legislation offering rewards for individuals who help track down spammers. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., proposed a national ``do-not-spam'' registry similar to an FTC service that is to begin blocking unwanted telemarketing calls this fall.

Spammers, by definition, are criminals (Trespass to chattel, theft of resources, fraud, etc..etc.) and would simply harvest and spam the "Do not spam" list. Private "unsubscribe" lists have been tried..Now most of them are frauds used to confirm "active" e-mail accounts, making those who click "Unsubscribe" more valuable as spam victims.

Spam can only be defeated by treating spammers as rabid dogs, with no quarter given. The Virginai Law is a good start.

I am gratified to see the HTML Illustrated porn spams; THAT is what it will take to create the outrage needed for a long-overdue legal lynching.

[Judith Anne]

For ten dollars a year, my ISP blocks spam from my email. I am delighted with the service. I don't know why all ISPs can't do this.

[Las Vegas Dave]

I just deleted about 30 spam messages over a 12 hour period on my att.net account, att has a filter that directs about 90% of spam in a special folder, but I still have to open that folder to delete the junk.

$.05 / spam message is a start, but didn't the x-42 administration talk about charging for ALL email to offset the loss with snailmail at the USPS?

(BTW I have noticed more spam on the weekends.)

[palmer]

Would work fine if we all dialed in to a government-run ISP. Been to the DMV lately?

[rgboomers]

"For ten dollars a year, my ISP blocks spam from my email. I am delighted with the service. I don't know why all ISPs can't do this."

This sounds like an excellent idea. It is a private enterprise solution as oppossed to a government tax solution. This is almost always better.

Additionally, we know it can work because someone is already doing it!

Hmm... maybe we could do both? Tax it and have the ISP's block it for a fee?

[palmer]

Because the spammers will give a few ISP's a pass, security through obscurity.

[rgboomers]

"Would work fine if we all dialed in to a government-run ISP. Been to the DMV lately?"

This certainly is a good point! How about the tax be collected similarily to the sales tax? Private merchants collect that tax and send it to the government.

[palmer]

I don't think it's the same model. You buy stuff from the merchant and he witholds tax and sends it in. He can be audited (gross receipts compared to taxes witheld). We can't reasonably expect a spammer to send any money in.

[jalisco555]

For ten dollars a year, my ISP blocks spam from my email. I am delighted with the service. I don't know why all ISPs can't do this.

I get my email through Time Warner's Road Runner and I haven't gotten a single piece of spam in years. I don't know how they do it but it's obviously doable. I don't think I've missed an important message either. This problem is fixable.

[rgboomers]

"I don't think it's the same model. You buy stuff from the merchant and he witholds tax and sends it in. He can be audited (gross receipts compared to taxes witheld). We can't reasonably expect a spammer to send any money in."

I certainly have to concede you have made a good case.

[palmer]

As far as I know, RoadRunner does nothing to stop spam. The reason I and my family and associates get spam is our emails are on our website so new customers can contact us. You may not have advertised your email address like that. Other people get spam because they signed up for popular services like hotmail where email addresses can be found in a directory or guessed using a dictionary.

[Skooz]

I also have a RR email account. I opened it last October and I have not recieved a single piece of spam since. But, then again, I guard that address zealously. I never post it anywhere, and only a few friends and family members know it.

When I first logged on to the internet in 1995, I had no idea about spam and posted my email address everywhere -- newsgroups, online purchases ... everywhere. My inbox became a cesspool, with dozens of spam messages everyday.

That has a lot to do with it. Your email cannot be harvested if it isn't posted anywhere.

[rgboomers]

" For ten dollars a year, my ISP blocks spam from my email. I am delighted with the service. I don't know why all ISPs can't do this."

" I get my email through Time Warner's Road Runner and I haven't gotten a single piece of spam in years. I don't know how they do it but it's obviously doable. I don't think I've missed an important message either. This problem is fixable."

I agree that the problem must be fixable. As I recall from the earliest days of spam, many ISP's just would not accept traffic addressed to thousands of accounts, all with the same message. The primary reason being that the additional bandwidth cost them too much. What's happened? I do not know for sure, but suspect the following:

1) Bandwidth is cheaper
2) ISP's charge spammers an extra fee. ISP's now make a profit on spam.

If an ISP did not make a profit on spam, I doubt if they would carry it.

[HIDEK6]

Let's keep the government out of it. Just charge $.05/E-Mail after, say 100 e-Mails/month.

[jalisco555]

As far as I know, RoadRunner does nothing to stop spam.

You may be right. I am pretty careful with my address although I do a fair amount of online shopping. Still, it seems pretty amazing that I have not gotten even one piece of spam in three years. I still keep my aol address but the spam makes it unusable.

[jalisco555]

If an ISP did not make a profit on spam, I doubt if they would carry it.

True, but if spam makes email unusable, which seems to be in danger of happening, there goes the profit. They have a powerful interest in stopping this abuse.

[Fawnn]

Out of curiosity, I just checked the spam filter for my domains: Only 22 e-mails caught in that one. But, none of my sites show a domainname.com-type reply address, so the spam filter catches those not sent to a legitimate address that for whatever reason didn't bounce.

I just checked the ISP filter for the reply address I *do* post on my sites. 131 messages caught in that spam filter -- since about midnight last night!

20-50 messages make it past the filters and into my In Box.

It's not unusual for me to get 250-300 spam a day. Spam traffic is heavier mid-week through the weekend.

In one way, the spam filters make it convenient because I can scan those messages at my convenience. The inconvenience is that I *do* have to scan those messages because occasionally something in a legitimate message triggers the filter. (The filters let me add addresses to an "approved list," but I don't take the time to add in every new address I add to my address book.)

Spam is a pain -- and I wish something could be done about it, but I'd never advocate another tax. (This idea isn't mine, but it's something I would advocate; it was originally mentioned when Berst did a "Report" for ZDNet: I wish porn sites were forced to use a .XXX address -- like www.thissiteisporn.xxx. That would make it easier to filter out spam from those places, as well as help solve some search engine problems. But I sorta digress....)

My long-winded way of saying that, yes, spam is bad. ;)