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Ah, I have such admiration for the folks that continue to bring us world class spam, hot and fresh, delivered right into our inbox. Always one step ahead of the game, always finding inventive ways to beat every spam filtering software known to man, always providing me the best deal for male enhancement pills and prescription drugs.

Some fun spam facts:

• 95% of all email is spam
• There are an estimated 90 billion spam messages that are transmitted daily, and
• 23.2% of all the spam in the world is made right here…in America.

Spam has evolved into a science as well. If we are in Web 2.0, we are definitely dealing with Spam 3.0. This third iteration, which evolved from simple text-based emails to “personalized subject” messages, is now a combination of an image based ad (like the one I’ve included), followed by some junk garble as the body of the email. Here is an excerpt from one I received this evening:

“artist has used to create his/her work, just like a camera, or a paper or on a computer. The progress made to computer programs computer systems. This brings me to my point. Are computers projector and then either hand painted or hand cut out of vinyl”

Cute, isn’t it? A simple randomizer scrambles this garble so that it differs from message to message. This helps evade content filters that weed out mass messages with the same body. Is there an easy way to identify these messages? Probably. But what’s the point. Spammers will always be ahead of this curve. Within 2-3 months of the latest and greatest update, they will find a way to beat the new filtering software. We can never solve this problem by looking at it from the receiving end.

Back in 2004, the Federal Trade Commission passed the CAN-SPAM Act (effective 1/1/2004). The law, in a nutshell, clearly states that:

1. it bans false or misleading header information
2. it prohibits deceptive subject lines
3. it requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method
4. it requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address.

Interestingly enough, my checklist for all the spam I receive is so far no, no, no and defnitely no. So all my spam, just like yours, is being sent illegally (no surprises there).

There are numerous efforts across various groups in trying to deal with spam programmatically. Proposed standards for email authentication and mail delivery are constantly being developed to arrive at a solution that will, at least, reduce some spam. A foolproof technical solution is unrealistic without some serious regulation and standardization from the FTC. Some random suggestions:

• making a physical address mandatory in an email message header
• Internet Mail 2000 - storage of mail is the responsibility of the sender and not the receiver
• putting more stringent controls on ISP’s by verifying their customer-base better

And like every other effort in reducing spam, the feasibility of these suggestions is debatable.

Where does this leave us? By far the most effective way to deal with spam is to report it. You can:

• send an email to the ISP or the domain registrar of the spammer, or even better
• you can forward all your spam to spam@uce.gov (FTC’s database for dealing with perpetrators)

That’s it. With more data, we can hope that the FTC increases the number of spam-related convictions over time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 @ 11:35 am on the category Tech Churn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.