Understanding Spam

Spam is a problem nearly as old as the Internet. In fact, the first spam was sent many years before the term was coined. On May 1, 1978 a tech savvy marketing agent sent every contact he had an advertisement for something they didn't ask for. What was it? Ironically, computer equipment.

It was not until several years later (1985) that the term spam became linked with the idea of bombarding computer users with something they didn't ask for and it wouldn't come from email.

A player of an early form of networked game, an ancestor to modern games like Blizzard's World of Warcraft, sent the message: "spam spam spam" (in reference to the the Monty Python song) repeatedly to every player in the game until he was eventually booted.

Now when we think of spam we are usually referring to the email ads for larger body parts or a paycheck from someone in small country we didn't previously know about. Spammers also infest blogs and Internet forums, clogging the comments with useless ads for their junk wares. The next time you have to squint and copy some heavily twisted letters into a box to prove you are human (the CAPTCHA test), thank a spammer and their automated posting tools.

Were did you get this email address?

Ever wonder how a spammer got your email address in the first place? It's likely they used a bot to snatch it of the web. Spammers use software programs to visit thousands of websites searching for email addresses and harvesting them into massive lists. It's also possible that they purchased it. Many spammers do a brisk business in the buying and selling of your information.

But I didn't send that junk!

Have you ever gotten an angry email from someone claiming that you spammed them? Or stranger yet, gotten a message that appears to be from yourself? Spammers very rarely use valid email addresses. Usually their purpose is to get you to click a link in the message. Faking the From line is a trivial task. It's just like writing a letter and putting a false return address on the envelope. Just as with real mail, there are signs of tampering if you look hard enough, but to a casual eye, it can be deceiving.

It's also possible that your computer has been hijacked. Spammers and virus writers often work together to create programs that once they infect your system will send junk in your name. This serves two purposes: it hides the spammer and it helps the garbage get past automated filters since it really does look like it comes from a trusted source.

Why they Spam

The cost to the spammer is nearly zero. If they have hijacked a server, or are using thousands of virus infected computers to blast their offers out, the cost is even less. If they make even a penny of every thousand emails sent, then sending two million emails can net a nice profit.

We pay the Price

Even conservative estimates indicate that nearly half the email traffic on the Internet is spam. Moving this much information about and trying to get the signal from the noise is costly for corporate IT departments and Internet Service Providers. A large number of companies have sprung up exclusively dedicated to dealing with spam. It is a continual arms race. Anti-spam companies devise new defenses only to be countered by ever more creative junk merchants.

The problem has gotten bad enough to draw legislative action. In 2003 President Bush signed the CAN-SPAM act into law. This bill outlined the legal way to send commercial email and defined penalties for those who failed to follow it. After some initial successes, it is now widely ignored.

Smart Filtering

Self-learning junk filters are now widely employed by Internet service providers and companies alike. These programs constantly hunt for patterns in your in-box. When you mark something as junk, they look at the visible content of the message as well as the detailed technical information (such as the routing information). In this way, they can adapt quickly to new threats. Even so they sometimes miss and label good mail (often called 'ham') as junk. More often, they err on the side of caution and let a suspicious message through.

Blacklists

Email providers have also had some success with 'black lists'. These are lists of known spam source and spam friendly mail services. Any message from one of these sources is either immediately considered junk, or marked for greater scrutiny. Sometimes however, innocent mailers and legitimate businesses get caught in the cross fire. Remember those innocent computers hijacked to send trash? They frequently get black listed.

The battle between spammers and tech professionals is not likely to end any time soon. Both sides simply have to much to gain to give up the fight easily. In the mean time, make sure to keep your virus scanning software updated and remember: if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.