Will Spam Ever Stop?

Spam is a problem that is growing exponentially. It is now believed that spam accounts for over 75% of all email correspondence on the internet. Each day the average net user will find dozens or even hundreds of new messages in their bulk mail folder and even a few stragglers that the spam filters don't catch. The messages invariably advertise pornographic sites, male enhancement medication, illegal drugs mailed to your home, mortgage offers and stock tips. Of course there are also the flagrant fraud messages from African princes offering millions of dollars if you will just cash a check for them. There are also messages that are garbled with poor English or emails containing deliberate misspellings that are trying to fool the spam filters. Some messages simply make no sense at all and are not discernibly advertising anything.

Of course most of us never even read these messages. Opening a spam message can infect your computer with a virus that will allow a spammer to harvest your email address book and personal information as well as use your computer as a "zombie" from which to send countless spam messages to other users. It is this last trick that allows most modern spammers to flood the internet with their junk messages without paying for any of them and without being detected by internet service providers attempting to enforce anti-spam legislation. Beyond the tangible risk to our computers we also don't open these messages on general principles. The modern world, especially in most major cities has become a deluge of unsolicited phone calls, emails, faxes and pamphlets. Many people simply will not read any information that they did not request. Thus through common sense, modern technology and a strong resolve not to be bullied by contemporary advertising, the overwhelming majority of spam messages are relegated to bulk mail folders and are summarily deleted each day.

Despite the fact that most spam messages don't get through, there is still something sinister in the ongoing war between spammers and everyone else. There is something disturbing in the growing numbers of emails that bombard our inboxes with each passing year. Bill Gates receives something in the neighborhood of one million spam messages per year. Doubtless Mr. Gates doesn't read any unsolicited email but the sheer number of spam messages must give him a moment of pause. The increasing spam traffic indicates an incredible determination on the part of the spammers to keep up their nefarious activities.

You have to get the image out of your head of the computer geek sitting in a garage smoking cigarettes and drinking Jolt cola while sending truck loads of emails through the world as revenge for his painful and unpopular adolescence. Today's spammers are often con artists and career criminals. Despite its reputation, spam pays and pays well. A handful of spammers located mostly in the United States, Eastern Europe and China are responsible for most of the traffic on the internet. These are men and women who are connected with organized crime and reap handsome profits for their activities. Many spammers today are organized into gangs and compete in what are tantamount to "turf wars" for various products, lists of emails, software or domain names. These conflicts have been known to become violent. The modern spammer wants to make money and that's all he cares about. The modern spammer simply does not care that you don't want to receive his messages. He doesn't care whether or not you buy the product he is advertising; he gets paid simply if you check out the website linked in the email and earns a bonus if you are the one person in a billion who buys something. The average spammer wants your email address, your address book, your personal and banking information, your bandwidth and your computer.

Spam is a numbers game with the entire net-using world as its mark. A spammer needs only a modest success rate to reap handsome profits. If one person in ten thousand clicks on a website for which a spammer advertises, the spammer receives a few dollars from the client. Spammers send out millions of emails per day, which means the number of hits and the advertising revenue quickly adds up. As long as spam is profitable, it is inevitable. I live in New York City and thus I am forced to deal with mice in my apartment. I have learned one universal truth about mice: if you leave out crumbs, you are going to attract mice. There is no use in getting angry with the mice; they are what they are by nature-single-minded and resourceful. If you want to control your pest problem, stop leaving out crumbs. A bank robber, when asked the question "Why do you rob banks?" famously quipped, "Because that's where the money is." During the Golden Age of piracy during 17th and 18^th centuries the Atlantic was flooded with cargo ships laden with gold, jewels, spices and valuable cargo. Pirates thrived by preying on this rich transatlantic commerce. Pirates still roam the world's seas harvesting huge rewards from the enormous cargo ships that crisscross the web of international commerce. Perhaps the internet is the new frontier for the pirates and bank robbers of old. There is certainly a lucrative flow of information that can be tapped on the internet in the form of credit card, bank account or social security numbers. Spammers and all forms of internet pirates, thieves and con artists will continue to operate as long as there is money to be stolen and as long as they can get away with it. History indicates that the only way to rid ourselves such parasites is to either make their efforts unprofitable or to deter them with increased security measures.

Bank robbers during the early 20^th century were ultimately thwarted by technological developments. Wireless communication spread the news of a robbery instantaneously and made the getaway much more difficult. Automatic rifles in the hands of government agents gave the "G-men" the upper hand in confrontations with armed criminals. Increased vault and bank security made it harder to "smash and grab" the loot. Improved naval technology and military campaigns waged against pirates ended the first golden age of piracy. In the technical arms race between spammers and the rest of the world, spammers have thus far wielded the upper hand. They have explored extremely diverse means to disseminate their emails. They use viruses, trickery, and high powered machinery. Their techniques evolve faster than any countermeasures developed by legitimate software programmers. Spammers have flooded every single public forum on the internet. More and more Myspace accounts have become private as individuals attempt to ward off the recent incursion of spammers attempting to get unwary users to check out webcam pornography sites. It's a shame that something everyone enjoys like Myspace has become host to the internet's equivalent of the tapeworm, but that is the reality of our technical world.

There have been many ideas designed to stop spammers. Anti-spam technology developers have fought an expensive but losing battle to stop spammers from getting their messages through. Spammers change their tactics far too often to be stopped by one swift technological stroke. Perhaps the best anti-spam ideas are not high tech but low tech. One idea that has gained some acceptance is the notion of charging for email messages beyond a certain number to discourage bulk mailing. While the average user would not pay for sending a few hundred messages per month, a spammer would have to pay a nickel for each message beyond the first 10,000 or so. Given the numbers of messages that spammers send, this fee would become costly. Deterrence in the form of heavy fines and lawsuits is another good idea. If the punitive damages for spamming are severe enough and you can catch enough spammers, you might just deter the rest. These fines should be levied against the companies that advertise through third-party spammers as well as the spammers themselves. Another good idea might be new regulations on internet advertising that specify that an advertiser can only be paid for the sales that they generate, not simply for getting people to navigate their browsers to a target website. The premise of this idea would be that spammers would be forced to create effective, legitimate advertising to earn a living, rather than the blanket bombing of email addresses that they have thus far carried out. Whatever the means of fighting this war turns out to be-legal or technological-we must find a way to take the profitability out of spam or we will never be rid of the crumb-snatching pests which the internet has spawned.