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http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/industries/computers_and_internet/4973792.htm Posted on Sun, Jan. 19, 2003 Together, we can rid the world of spam MIKE LANGBERG Knight Ridder News Service Only you can prevent spam fires. I'm putting on my park ranger hat and appearing today as Spammy the Bear to spread some happy news: Acting together, there is finally a chance to stop the scourge of unsolicited commercial e-mail, better known as spam. The level of public outrage is rising to the level where politicians and Internet service providers (ISPs) can't avoid the issue. This isn't surprising, considering the huge growth in the obnoxious and unwelcome pitches we get for low-cost mortgages, unclaimed bank accounts in Nigeria and creams to enlarge various body parts. Brightmail, a San Francisco firm that makes spam-filtering tools for ISPs and corporations, is keeping track: The number of individual spam attacks, each of which can involve many thousands of messages, soared from 931,000 in May 2001 to 5.4 million in October 2002. About one-third of e-mail received by home-computer users is now spam, and some people get much more; three-fourths of my incoming messages are spam, the price I pay for having a widely disseminated e-mail address. Spam is rapidly shifting from an annoyance to a serious threat. We'll all suffer if people abandon e-mail out of disgust with spam. What's more, the time we spend dealing with spam at work cuts into productivity, while the extra computer storage space required for unwanted e-mail raises the cost of Internet access for everyone. So why am I optimistic? There are three parts to any comprehensive solution, and there is progress in each of them: Spam blocking. ISPs, corporations and other large organizations need to stop spam before it reaches individual in-boxes. Silicon Valley recognizes this unmet need, and there's been a surge in local start-ups dedicated to providing spam-fighting software. So tools are now available that effectively stop most spam. You can play a part by insisting your ISP provide spam blocking. Many large ISPs already offer such services, although America Online, the biggest of them all with 26.5 million U.S. subscribers, continues to offer inferior spam filtering. You can also make the same request at work or school. Legislation. More and more states are passing anti-spam laws, but what's really needed is action by Congress to ban spam nationwide. The House and Senate have tried and failed to push through weak anti-spam laws for several years. You can get involved by making it clear to your congressional representatives that stopping spam is important and is an issue that will contribute to how you vote in the next election. An effective federal law would create a sound legal definition of spam and would allow what's called "private right of action" - in plain English, letting individuals sue spammers and the companies that hire them. The good news here is a groundbreaking decision last month by the Direct Marketing Association, a powerful lobbying group representing large direct-mail companies, to drop its previous position objecting to any proposed anti-spam legislation. The DMA is still likely to resist strong anti-spam proposals, but at least there's now a glimmer of hope for congressional movement. To those who say legislation would never work, I would cite a precedent: Laws banning junk faxes in the early 1990s largely eliminated the problem. Fax machine owners still get occasional junk faxes, but not so many that use of fax machines is threatened. Consumer education. Spam happens solely because of the profit motive, as sleazy spammers troll for paying customers. The response rates can be minuscule - just one-hundredth of 1 percent equals 100 orders from a spam mailing of 1 million messages - for spammers to earn their repugnant livings. But if the response rate were zero, spam would quickly evaporate. So, we need a public-education campaign, akin to the familiar Smokey Bear, spreading the word to never, ever buy anything offered through unsolicited e-mail. You can participate by explaining the situation to any family members or friends who don't already understand this important point. In a weird way, the recent spam surge may be an early sign of success. Spammers are complaining of plummeting response rates, most likely due to a combination of widespread filtering, consumer overload and growing awareness that accepting offers made through spam is wrong. We're only at the beginning of a long struggle, but the tide is slowly turning in our favor and spam will ultimately go back in the can. I encourage you to join me in becoming part of the process. |
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