Fighting Spam - Is It A Loosing Battle?
August 31, 2008
In June this year, Neo from WebProWorld started a very interesting discussion on spam. Although his post mainly revolved around forum spam, he did touch a very actual topic. Spam is not only limited to one medium only, spam is a much bigger problem than most people realise. We have to deal with forum spam, search engine spam, e-mail form spam, guest book spam (for those who still use guest books on their websites), article spam (yes article syndication can also turn into annoying spam), IRC spam, blog spam, comment spam, ebook spam, affiliate network spam, mobile phone spam, and of course the infamous unsolicited junk e-mails. I am sure I missed a couple, but I think you get the picture, spam has infiltrated almost every digital form of communication. No wonder people become pessimistic about fighting spam.
Some interesting reasoning came to light during this discussion on WebProWorld. One thing that sticks out its head in every discussion about spam is the apathetic approach towards spam. The attitude of spam has always been a problem and will always be, live with it, accept the problem, you cannot change it, nor can you fix it. There is no merit in any of these statements, so lets take a closer look at them and I will show you why. Spam has always been a problem. Really? Spam started to become a problem when people discovered its marketing potential. Spam wasnt a problem in the early days of the Web, we allowed it to become a problem by accepting the problem. Yes people got punished back then, but the spam volumes increased so much that it became impossible to punish every single spammer. Companies seem to be more concerned about treating the symptoms (with spam filters) than attacking the root of the problem. The right statement would be: Spam has always been allowed to be a problem.
Spam will always be a problem. Do we know for certain? Spam may eventually cause the collapse of the e-mail communication system and how do something remain a problem if the infrastructure is gone? If you believe that spam will always be a problem, then you obviously believe that whatever replaces e-mail will also fall victim to spam. Probably, but the creators of a new communication infrastructure will be complete idiots if they allow history to repeat itself. Spam has become a problem because of crippling legislation and in certain cases a total lack of legislation. How can we battle spam if legislation allows spammers to spam you until you tell them to stop? Its like allowing murderers to kill you until you tell them to stop. Can you see how ridiculous our current spam legislation is, spam will always be a problem, as long as we allow useless laws to regulate it.
Live with it, accept the problem, you cannot change spam, nor can you fix it. People change, they adapt to their environment. Our kids are growing up with spam, so it will have a far smaller effect on them than it had on us. Those of us who grew up with commercials and ads displayed during our favourite TV shows, have developed a kind of blindness to these ads. Our children will also develop spam blindness over time, they will not respond to spam as easily as we do. It is a matter of education and removing the ignorance. Spam only works because people continue to respond to them.
According to an article by Michael Specter, Damn Spam The losing war on junk e-mail, spammers usually need to send a million e-mails to get fifteen positive responses, for the average direct-mail campaign, the response rate is three thousand per million. With a response rate as little as that you can easily see where spam could be heading if we can limit the response rate to zero. There will be no sense in sending spam anymore. People need to realize what is counted as a response and what they can do to limit accidental responses. Yes, simply by opening the e-mail already counts as a response in many cases.
Should we accept spam, should we live with it? Well you can easily ask, should we accept serious crimes like murder, rape and armed robbery? Just think what would happen if we had the same attitude towards these wrongdoings, crimes forbidden by civil law. What is civil law, it is actually common sense. We know it is wrong to steal money from someone else, but we are willing to live with a system where it is acceptable for other people to waste our money. That is exactly what spam is.
Conventional advertising demands an investment from the advertiser, making it an unattractive medium for cheap unsolicited bulk advertising. However in the case of spam, the consumer ends up paying for the advertising. Some spammers do not even pay a penny for sending these batches of spam, they have bot networks doing the work for them. These bot networks consist of consumer PCs infected with malware. The one consumer (the sender) unknowingly pays to send the spam and the other consumer (the recipient) unknowingly pays to receive the spam. So the consumer coughs up on both sides of the channel.
Brad Taylor, Gmail anti-spam engineer, sees the battle against spam as a war. One side eventually gets tired and anti-spam authorities cannot allow themselves to get tired in this struggle against spam. Sometimes the spammers get tired of trying to fool the spam filters and eventually give up, but only for a short space of time. During this rest period they regroup to find a loophole in the filtering system. Once they discover a way around it, they start spamming again. Stock market spam is a classic example of this roller coaster ride. Stock market spam was quiet for some time and suddenly they started popping up like weed via PDF attachments.
Spammers will always try to circumvent the system. Does this mean we should give up trying to beat them at their own game? Absolutely no, spammers annoy us with their unsolicited junk, so if we have means to our disposal to annoy them too, why not use it? The war against spam is far from over, the battle against spam is far from lost, I say bring it on.
About the Author
Coenraad is webmaster and founder of Cyber Top Cops, leaders in Internet security, prevention of online fraud and raising awareness about the importance of reporting spam.
Filter Spam Make Spam Get Out Of your Inbox
How much time do you spend every day to delete spam or read them? Definitely a sizable amount of the precious productive time is spent on dealing with spam. Almost all internet users using emails and mailboxes encounter this problem. Spam usually car...
FTC Botches Fight on SPAM, Microsoft Takes Over the Battle
While the Federal Trade Commission is busy fighting over definitions of What is SPAM; Microsoft and Bill Gates are taking it to the enemy. Today Microsoft announced another case and legal action, which is being taken against a spammer who is in Germa...
Fight The Battle Of Spam Mails With Anti Spam
No mailbox is spared from the attack of spam mails. When you open your mailbox every day, the spam folders overflow with mails than you regular inbox. Not a day goes by without encountering spam in one way or other. Of course latest anti spam softwar...
Stop Spam
Spam has become a major nuisance to e-mail users and computer technology experts. Sending irrelevant and inappropriate messages, basically for advertising purposes is a bane on the Internet. But yet, people feel they are part of Internet and that it ...
Strategies To Fight Email Spam
If you are a business owner and you rely on email, spam is going to be a major concern. How you address it can make a big difference in employee efficiency. Email spam has been a nuisance and has gotten even worse over the last several years. Emai...
The Key To Beating Spam
Spammers have changed their tactics a lot over the last few years and the amount of spam circulating the Internet is rising at an alarming rate. The vast diversity of spam messages and different techniques used by spammers make it hard to identify sp...
What is Anti-Spam Filter
Spam is unsolicited and unwanted email. Other common names of spam are spam mail, bulk email or just junk mail. Today, spam has reached such monumental proportions that almost every other message we receive is spam. Protecting the inbox with anti-spa...
Anti Exchange Server Spam Go Get IT!
Large business which have personal servers to help them with their business solutions are also under the attack pf spam mails. The amounts of time spend by the employees to delete the spam and the companies resources are wasted. Moreover the company ...
Firewall spam Get Rid of Those Malicious Spams!
Cyberspace today is attacked by viruses, spams, trogon, spy wares etc with the main purpose of causing trouble to the internet users. The internet users thus feel very insecure and are always in a fear against this softwares, which enters the operati...
Fight that Spam with an Email Anti Spam
You may have probably encountered an increase in the number of junk mails in your email box. There are also some instances that you see the junk mails on your saved favorite news groups. With the increasing number of people doing small and illegal ac...