©03 The Media Desk
http://themediadesk.com
But will laws and filters and lists do any good?
No.
The Desk shall go through these point by point and explain why they will not work. And at the end, provide an idea that will, but cannot be done do to something so insidiously entrenched it cannot be controlled.
LAWS
By looking at the headers of the SPAM (versus the from address which can and often is different when dealing with SPAM) in two of the Desk's mailboxes it found out that a sizable number of those messages
either originated or were routed through offshore servers. Barbados (.bb)
showed up in a couple, as did some others like Russia (.ru) and the Virgin Islands (.vi and .vg).
Of course a lot of them, OK, the vast majority of today's SPAM comes out of the over seven hundred fifty 'Clueless Mailers' identified by groups like the SPAMDEMIC Research Center at www.cluelessmailers.org or the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email www.cauce.org.
But the point is this. While the majority of SPAM
originates from domains registered and operated by US companies. Quite a bit
of it does not.
Nothing the State of Delaware (with the toughest
NO SPAM law on the books and zero prosecutions under said law), Utah which
just sold their souls to the SPAMMERS to loosen their very restrictive laws,
or even Uncle Sam who now has laws and provisions in hearings to combat
SPAM… nothing they do will have any affect at all on a SPAMMER using a
server in Barbados. Unless they officially block all inbound traffic from
that domain, which the Barbados Tourism Office will not appreciate at
all.
Also, if Delaware has the laws but lacks the
enforcement arm to track down and bust SPAMMERS, and the jail space to
assign them to when it does, exactly what good will another law do?
It is hard to believe a Federal Law Enforcement
organization will be any more effective. Surely the FBI has better things to
do than track down somebody falsifying subject lines in emails, saying 'I
found your checkbook' when the message body is an ad for a horny cheerleader
website. And then if the said G-men in true FBI fashion 'Gets Their Man',
what happens when it turns out the SPAMMER is in Latvia (.lv)? Is Interpol
going to go after them?
All Federal Laws will do is harass honest (it is
hard to use that word to describe SPAMMERS but there it is nonetheless)
actual businesses advertising real goods and services through the cheapest
and easiest way to reach a defined target audience while our buddy with the
cheerleader pictures and his offshore server goes on his merry way.
Requiring the abbreviation ADV: in the subject
line will just give the SPAMMERS a hint for what to avoid.
Irma the Internet Used Appliance Lady will follow
the law and restrict her mailings and you may never see her Reconditioned
Microwave Oven Special, even if you are in the market for one. But the Desk
will bet Spam Sandwiches to Donuts you will still have a mailbox full of ads
for prescription drugs through the mail, porn, and Nigerian Scam letters,
Law or no Law.
FILTERS
Filters are somewhat effective.
Sometimes.
With some SPAM.
But there are limits to even the best
filters.
Long articles have been written about the
layering of filters looking for everything from viruses to smutty jokes. The
reason the people that get paid to know this kind of thing use layered
filters is that no one filter is going to catch even half the incoming SPAM
that tries to invade most systems. Keyword searches block real mail from a
client but let through SPAM where the SPAMMER has replaced the words
'mortgage loans' with nonsense like 'mort$gage loan$'. Domain blockers may
restrict everything from a single source, but even bastions in the Anti-SPAM
war like MSN, Yahoo! and AOL have millions of Real Customers as well as
dozens, if not hundreds of SPAMMERS that use, and abuse, their services. If
you block AOL, you're blocking a lot of your clients and employees.
If you block graphics or outside links, yes you
cut down a lot of bulk mail catalogs, those cheerleader ads again, and links
to Irma's microwaves. But you have also just deleted the link to the
blueprint proofs your architect is trying to mail to you, your vendor's
virtual business card with their new toll free number on it, and the
pictures of your secretary's grandkids.
And true enough. Not all applications of all
words should be banned by the filters. While it is a stretch to say
everything on the 'Seven Dirty Word' list have a legitimate use. The word
'Shag' came into play as something improper as a result of the Austin
Powers' movies, yet if you are ordering carpet or talking about your
longhaired cat with your vet, it is perfectly innocent. Your filter manager
may be a little embarrassed if they had banned all occurrences of the word
'breast' as offensive and tagged an employee for repeatedly getting emails
with the B-word in them, then the censor finds out the employee is the
county coordinator for a Breast Cancer Support charity.
DO NOT SPAM LISTS
When the anti-telemarketers Do Not Call Lists
first came out, some of the shadier groups got hold of those lists and used
them as their Call Lists. The list was a goldmine for them. Here they had a
file of known working numbers, usually with addresses and names as well, of
people by state and area code.
Some of the marketing firms got busted, but the
fines were seen by them as part of the cost of doing business.
Do Not SPAM lists will probably work the same
way.
And again. A Do Not SPAM list for Illinois will
most likely have no meaning to a SPAMMER in California. Same for a US
National Do Not SPAM list to somebody from Haiti (.ht). And what is to stop
somebody from getting the list and targeting those people that signed up for
a barrage of credit offers and cash advance scams?
WHAT WILL WORK
At last check the Desk could have bought 200
MILLION working email addresses for $199. Or as touted in the ad, 'Less than
a Dollar per Million Addresses'.
The email program cost another hundred dollars or
so. Given a spare computer and a second phone line the Desk could go into
business for itself sending out SPAM at the rate of a thousand or so per
minute, day and night, for however long it would take to exhaust that list.
Then there is nothing from stopping it from starting the list all over
again.
Or if it wanted to, it could invest another
ninety nine dollars for Two Million Charity Donors email addresses. Or
$19.95 for a Million BtoB addresses.
Where do these outfits get all these
addresses?
Well, Hotmail sold their address list once upon a
time. Outfits like the United Way have been known to as well. If you sign up
for Flo-Go's daily jokes, or join an online club. Your address is out
there.
Yet the Desk has an account at USWeekly.com that
it has never used anywhere for anything, and it still averages eighty SPAM
messages a day. USWeekly simply sold access to their system to the SPAMMERS
and there you go.
Truth be told. You do not have to do ANYTHING to
get so much SPAM you can't find the letter from your cousin in your
mailbox.
The Media Desk's main mailbox is almost useless
because of the flood. Another account the Desk had for reader responses had
to be closed because of the amount of incoming SPAM.
Robots crawl the web looking for posted email
addresses. The ones it finds (keying on the @ symbol in the address or the
hotlink to an email program) goes into its memory as an address to be used
to send stuff to.
Even if you send out a mass mailing of one of
those friendship tests or an official communiqué‚ to a live list, and it
gets forwarded fourteen times, a SPAMMER could end up with a free list of a
couple of hundred of addresses not usually available to them.
Ahhh… Yes… a question…
Why is the SPAM still flowing?
For the answer to that we have to go back to a
marketing expert known far and wide for consumer savvy… PT Barnum.
"There's a sucker born every minute."
People are gullible and some are insurmountably
ignorant.
There are those out there who believe they can
buy a car for a dollar, or that some former petroleum minister from the
Ivory Coast wants their help to launder twenty million dollars.
They give up their credit card number for free
access to look at the pictures of the cheerleaders and are more than happy to tell all their friends about the great bargains available on prescription drugs.
Face it, if the SPAMMER was going broke, he'd have to quit it and get a real job. Like selling TVs out of the back of his SUV at the farmer's market.
For that investment of about four hundred dollars the Desk could expect a five to ten percent return of replies and email queries, then maybe a ten to twenty percent rate of actual purchases on those. Multiply that by the 200 million emails sent out and you get a pretty good return on investment. And with some other lists, opt-in, targeted interests, previous buyers, it can be even higher.
There is money to be made, and there are those willing to ignore or flaunt the law in order to get their piece of the action.
And now with Mafia interests in certain aspects of the online game, Gaming for one, it is liable to get worse before it gets any better.
Not don't get the Desk wrong here. Major retailers and some well known insurance companies use email campaigns. So do legitimate magazine and entertainment companies. BUT! When Uncle passes a law regulating SPAM, they will be the only ones who obey it. Our friend running his cheerleader porn site as a credit billing SCAM front from a server in Guatemala (.gt) won't give it a second thought.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Email Account Security:
Treat your Main Email Address like your Social Security Number. Do not just give it out to anybody that looks interested.
Create a second, or in the Desk's case, Nineteenth, email account and use it when an email address must be given to sign up for whatever it is. Then go retrieve the password they send to you at that address, and then only check it once a week to dump the SPAM.
If you buy something online. USE A CREDIT CARD. That way you have some recourse if it turns out to be a SCAM.
SPAM Fingerprints:
If the subject line says something that looks like they are replying to you about something you normally do not use, for example RE: Your New Car -or- RE: re: prescription question, It Is SPAM.
If there are random characters in the Subject Line or something is grossly misspelled. It Is SPAM.
If it is from Yourself. SPAMMERS use programs that insert your own name and address into the from line to get around filters, most people do not filter their own addresses. It Is SPAM.
If you see the same subject line from several different people, none of whom you know. OR, the same person sends you multiple emails with different subjects. It Is SPAM.
If the Subject line looks too good to be true: IT IS! Examples: You Won That Car!, You Are Approved for new Unsecured Gold Card. Or the Desk's all time favorite; an XFL Cheerleader is Dying to Meet YOU! (For the record, the Desk has Never met an XFL cheerleader.)
When You Get It: THINK!
Do NOT Open Obvious SPAM. SPAMMERS are now using javascripts in their emails that tell their servers if you open their message. That way they know the mailbox works, and you read garbage.
DO NOT REPLY TO SPAM. Do not click on the button that says Remove, do not click on the link to whatever it is, do not send them a message to remove your name. All that does is tell them you read your mail and pay attention to it.
Do not Forward SPAM. Technically, the poem about a mother's love is not SPAM (unsolicited commercial email) but after you get the same thing in your mailbox five times from three people, it counts.
Report it! Major ISPs (internet service providers) all have some sort of SPAM office. Major email providers MSN, AOL, Yahoo! have SPAM contacts. Major private networks have SPAM ombudsmen. If you get one message a week from Irma, that's not going to raise any flags, but if you get SPAMBOMBED, dozens or even hundreds of the same thing, sometimes with different from addresses or subject lines (another problem with filtering and blocking it) let somebody know. One time the Desk got over 400 of the same email in less than three hours. That was a SPAMBOMB, and it reported it, in this case, to MSN. Pick a number, say nine, and when you get the ninth identical SPAM, shoot off an email to the SPAM guru for your provider, whoever it may be. Sooner or later, they will get the idea. If you get a really juicy SCAM email, check out somebody like http://www.fraud.org who'll
just love to hear from you.
BLOCK IT. Most email providers have user programmable filters of some fashion or other. Use Them! Block popular SPAM
subject lines (including: Viagra, credit and opt-in - or domains that send you the most. The Desk blocked- amazingdeals.com among others).
WHAT TO DO WITH SPAM
delete it
thank you
For More Information see article and more links at the below address:
http://www.themediadesk.com/files/urban.htm#links
The Media Desk's Urban Legend and SPAM
page
[NOTE: There is no Irma the Internet Used Appliance Lady. All other SPAMMERS, domains, and organizations that fight SPAM do exist. The Desk is not affiliated with any of them. Thank you.]
Permission to forward this article with credit to the Desk is hereby given. All other rights reserved.
these links for the benefit of SPAMMER robots: Fight Spam! Click Here! and Spam Bot Candy
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