Energy Bookstore

Mark C. Robinson
The Energy Grid
14 Veterans Rd, #22
Amherst, NH 03031
(603) 791-4699

Spam is inevitable!

Basic laws of physics explain why SPAM is inevitable. Unchecked, though, it could bring the internet to its knees. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the number of useless email that floods our mailboxes but they require some attention, and a basic knowledge of how spam works. In 2004, 80% of all email was spam. In February 2007, the spam level was reported to be about 85% or 90 billion spam emails per day.

How to stop SPAM by changing your email address

            The origins of spam are vague. The term is often  attributed to a Monty Pyton sketch in which a group of Vikings in a restaurant start a song: "Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam! Wonderful spam!" Until told to shut up. The song was useless, repetitive, and drowned out normal conversation. Thus the meaning of the term “spam”: something that keeps repeating and repeating to great annoyance. Others credit the acronym “Single Post to All Messagebases.”  Hormel foods, maker of the canned "Shoulder Pork and hAM"/"SPiced hAM" luncheon meat, eventually gave up trying to protect their copyright.

            Why do they send Spam? Simple - because it works. When someone sends out a million emails, even the smallest return rate can be a windfall. Most spam is sent out by intelligent programs called ‘bots that are installed on computers by virus’ and controlled remotely. You may be unknowingly sending out spam from your computer from a virus or ‘root kit’ secretly installed on your computer. To prevent it – keep your virus software updated.

Just as physical laws prohibit perpetual motion and speed of light travel, all signals must contain some noise. You can’t have radio reception without static, or electrical flow without losses. Email is a signal that has no loss, as what goes in one end is exactly what comes out the other, but it does have noise, as some percentage of emails will be spam. The answer for spam is the same as the answer for electronics: filters. In addition, there are several simple things we can do to reduce the amount of spam we receive.

Spam Filters:

The problem with filters is that they, too, aren’t perfect. If you use a spam filter then there will be important emails occasionally missed. The do-not-call list was a successful ‘filter’ but even that is quickly being eroded. There are several technologies in use today:

White List/Black List – Typically, all of the people in your address book are put in a ‘white list’ and are allowed through. ‘Black Lists’ are built from common databases of spammers such as www.spamcop.net. Often, legitimate email newsletters are put on these lists causing huge problems for companies that follow the rules.

Rules Based – Emails containing certain words are blocked, much to the chagrin of caretakers of female dogs, roosters, and donkeys.

Heuristic analysis is another method which involves running an e-mail message through a variety of tests. These tests include searching for characteristics that are typically inherent in spam. Each characteristic is assigned a spam probability, and the message is given a cumulative probability score based on the overall test results. If a certain probability threshold is reached, the e-mail is determined to be spam and is blocked. If not, the e-mail goes through.

Blocking: Some companies like Earthlink and AOL offer services that block everyone except those that are on your lists or fill out a request form with cryptic characters that cannot be read by machine. This is not useful in business because it makes it difficult for potential customers to reach you.

            Trend Micro, maker of security software, offers a free spam protection application for use with outlook or outlook express that I, personally, use throughout my offices. It is available here:
http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/desktop/anti-spam/evaluate/overview.htm
In addition, all major anti-virus companies offer spam protection that work with some degree of reliability.

The problem with filters is that it becomes an ‘arms race’ game where the spammers constantly change their tactics to thwart the best efforts of the anti-spam alliance.

Actions you can Take.

Unsubscribing. Unsubscribing to spam emails can often have the effect of giving your verified email address to the spammer. Unsubscribing to legitimate newsletters is fine, the problem is that you end up with only the spam left.

Emails on the Web. Whenever you post an email address and it appears on the web, it can be ‘harvested’ by spammers. Using the terminology Mark <at> TheEnergyGrid <dot> com seems to work for the moment, but it won’t last. On most of my websites, I use a javascript scrambler that makes my address appear to people but invisible to robots. The program is available for free at www.InnerPeace.org and is called ‘escrambler’.

Courtesy Copy/Carbon Copy. Whenever you send an email with a large number of addresses in the ‘cc’ field, you are making these addresses publicly available. If you send a hilarious joke (ROTFLMAO)* it might be passed on to thousands of people, offering up your email address to everyone. Discourage this from people you know. Teach them to use the bcc (blind carbon copy) field.

Most effective method: Changing your email address. This requires a little more knowledge, but is possibly the most effective way of controlling spam.  

Have several email addresses.

• No-risk addresses – used for banking, credit cards, etc.
• Low risk address – used for friends an relatives
• Medium risk address – used for ecommerce, subscriptions, quality newsletters.
• High risk address – Posting public messages, signing up for suspicious offers, etc.

Each one will receive some amount of spam, with the most going to the high risk address. After several months, the high risk address will be getting too much spam, delete it.

After a time, perhaps a year, the medium risk address will be found by the spammers, you will:

• Create a rule in outlook to highlight all emails coming into this account and change the address on subscriptions you want to keep.
• After a few weeks, put an ‘Auto Reply’ on the mailbox letting senders know that the address will be changing in 60 days – but that you still received the email they sent.
• In 60 days, change the ‘Auto Reply” to say that the mailbox is closed and their message was not received, please resend to your new mailbox (without including the full address in the message).

Legislation:

      There are US and International laws against spam and cases are won, spammers jailed, but it only stems the flow. So many are untraceable, or are from legal origins that only a fraction will prosecuted. www.Spamlaws.com has a great summary.

Spam is inevitable.

      It is a function of human nature and the physical signal-to-noise ratio. It can be reduced with the judicious use of filters and good practices, but it cannot be eliminated. We will tolerate spam as we tolerate all the other annoyances of life.

Sidebar: History of SPAM

1971 - MIT's Compatible Time Sharing System (CTSS), Peter Bos used CTSS MAIL to send everybody the anti-war message that: "THERE IS NO WAY TO PEACE. PEACE IS THE WAY."

1978 - DEC announced a new DEC-20 machine by sending an invite to all ARPANET addresses on the west coast, using the ARPANET directory, inviting people to receptions in California. They were chastised for breaking the ARPANET appropriate use policy, and a notice was sent out reminding others of the rule

For more information, see Keith Lynch’s timeline of spam. http://keithlynch.net/spamline.html

References:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam – Wikipedia, World’s foremost authority on everything

http://crm114.sourceforge.net/#wellt - CRM114 - the Controllable Regex Mutilator

http://www.theworldjournal.com/2003/fightspam.htm – The world.com Journal of Technology

http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html – Brad Templeton’s history of the internet