Spammed if You Do,
Chicken-boners, mainsleazers and spiders
are out to get you. Is there any way to cram
this crap back in the can? By Ben Fogelson
Let it be said that during the research and writing of this
piece I received an average of 69 spam e-mails per day.
D
o you know just how friggin’ low
an interest rate you can get?
Care to help the Nigerian
Empress Ndugndugndug smug-
gle $500 million out of Africa?
Are you in dire need of a truly unstop-
pable penis?
If you’ve been riding the Internet pony,
you recognize these familiar queries as
“spam,” which you quickly or not-so-quickly
send to your “trash,” or delete with a god-like
drag of your mouse-finger.
As one Eugene Free Net (EFN) employee
put it, “What’s one man’s obscenity is an-
other man’s meat-and-potatoes.” Spam, or
unsolicited bulk e-mail, is an increasing
irritant in the folds of international cyber-
flesh.
“It’s commonly believed,” says Steve
VanDevender, system administrator for the
UO Computing Center, “that there’s about as
much spam now as legitimate e-mail. And
signs indicate that it’s just going to get
worse.”
Get worse? I don’t know if “TEEN
BARNYARD SEX” can get any worse.
What’s happening with the spam problem?
What can you do to make your inbox more
friendly? What’ll happen if my wife takes a
Viagra? Please read on for answers to not all
of these questions.
12 JULY 31, 2003
Spammers vs.
Anti-Spammers
Fear not, reader, for you are not alone.
You’re not the only one who wishes a violent
end to e-mails featuring subject headings
such as “MAKE MONEY FAST” or “MAS-
SIVE BLACK COCKS.” You’ll be glad to
know there are others, soda-gulping heroes
endowed with more techie knowledge than
you can possibly imagine, who fight the good
fight against the terror of unsolicited e-mail.
Spamhaus (www.spamhaus.com) may be
one of the world’s leading anti-spam war-
riors. An organization dedicated to tracking
and cataloging Internet addresses of career
spammers, Spamhaus notes on their site, “90
percent of spam received by Internet users in
North America and Europe is sent by a group
of under 200 hard-core spam outfits.” Almost
all of them, claims Spamhaus, are “black-
listed” on their site, allowing Internet
providers, such as UO or EFN, to freely ac-
cess the Spamhaus list. Then providers can
filter out messages originating from the worst
spam-associated locations.
But career spammers, “hackers gone bad,
or they are crooks gone geek,” as Internet
lawyer Alan Ralsky puts it, are continually
finding new ways to exploit the Internet. “It’s
not a technical problem,” says EFN System
Administrator Patrick Wade. “It’s a social
problem. We can get technical and try to find
out where spams are coming from, but then
spammers work hard to get around what we
come up with. It’s a cycle. For example, prox-
ies used to not be a problem.”
Proxies are programs used by spammers
to hide their tracks. Valuable to companies
that use more than one computer on a net-
work, proxies, if setup improperly, can be-
come hidden treasure to the ever web-scour-
ing tech-savvy spammer. Spammers use
web-crawling programs, sometimes called
spiders, to search the net for proxies. When a
spider program tells a spammer it’s found an
unguarded proxy, off go millions of e-mails,
and the spammer’s identity is concealed.
When anti-spam organizations fight back
by publishing known spam origins, spam-
mers return the blows, legal style. Take for
example the April 2003 lawsuit
(http://spamhaus.org/legal/answer-03-
80295.html) filed against Spamhaus by Mark
Felstein of EmarketersAmerica in Boca
Raton, Fla. (Florida is one of the 24 remain-
ing states where spam is still legal).
Felstein claims that Spamhaus’ activity
threatens EmarketersAmerica’s existence
through the posting and trade of libelous in-
formation (their black list), sale of products
which block Emarketers transmissions, “in-
terrupting the flow of interstate commerce
and international commerce” and a direct at-
tack upon EmarketersAmerica. However,
Spamhaus asserts that not only had it never
heard of EmarketersAmerica before the suit,
but that that corporation was formed only
four weeks prior to the suit for the express
purpose of filing it. Spamhaus adds that it
sells no product or information whatsoever,
that users may freely access Spamhaus’s list
of servers in order to block entry of spam
transmissions onto their own private comput-
ers and that Felstein also happens to be the
sole proprietor of EmarketersAmerica as well
as the personal lawyer of Eddy Marin,
“America’s top spammer.”
The cast and characters are serious, and it
seems they’re dedicated to battling it out. In a
previous e-mail response to Felstein’s im-
pending lawsuit, Spamhaus wrote “[l]et me
know when you’ll be coming over to London
to file a real lawsuit under UK law, until then
you spammers simply spin on my forefinger.”
At this time, a temporary restraining order
request by EmarketersAmerica to prohibit
Spamhaus from continuing its activities has
been denied.
Legislative Action
Pressure is building in Congress and the
Federal Trade Commission (California-based
Ferris Research says in 2002 spam cost U.S.
corporations $8.9 billion and U.S. Internet
Service Providers $500 million in lost time
and productivity) from both vehement anti-
spam groups as well as fervent marketing, re-
tailing and Internet provider industries. It
wont be long before spam will crawl back in
the can or flip its lid wide open. There are
several ways it could fall, and opinions vary
widely.
• Opt-In or Opt-Out? One version of legisla-
tion pushed by marketing, retailing and
Internet provider industries protects the rights
of “legitimate” marketers to advertise by e-
mail unless consumers specifically “opt-out.”
New federal bills, pushed by Republican
Reps. Richard Burr (The Reduction in
Distribution of Spam Act of 2003) and
Heather Wilson (The Anti-Spam Act of
2003) contain provisions requiring advertis-
ers to honor consumers’ requests to be re-
moved from specific e-mail lists. Can you
imagine responding to all the spam you re-
ceive, asking to be taken off each list?
“Unsubscribing is almost always useless,”
said EFN’s Wade, “because that tells the
spammers it’s a real address. Even if they do
take you off, which isn’t always the case, they
can sell your ‘live’ address to someone else.”
The concept of “opt-out” makes anti-spam
groups want to gag.
Ray Everett-Church, counsel for CAUCE
(Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial
E-mail), expressing the sentiment that any le-
gitimization of unsolicited bulk e-mail is a
step in the wrong direction, said of the two
bills, “They’re both equally ineffectual. It’s
like two flavors of Swiss cheese.”
For those who like cheddar, the flip-side is
the “opt-in” approach, favored by anti-spam
organizations such as Spamhaus and CAUCE.
So far there’s nothing to represent “opt-in” in
federal or state legislative processes. It’s the
idea that everyone has the undeniable right to
receive only that which they wish to receive.
The “opt-in” concept sets a precedent that
spam will not be allowed unless someone goes
through the trouble of signing up for it.
E-marketing businesses would remain,
but in order to receive a marketing e-mail, an
individual would have to sign-up their
Internet address with a particular group or
company, be sent a reply e-mail asking if
their sign-up was intentional, send a confir-
mation to that reply, and the previous “spam-
mers” would then and only then find them-
selves in the realm of “legitimate Internet
marketing.
Of course to the e-marketers who cur-
rently send out 100 million e-mails a day,
who use the argument that some individuals
do reply to their electronic deluge, that solu-
tion smells like limburger.
• Do-Not-E-mail Registries. Borrowing steam
from the recent enactment of a federal Do-
Not-Call List (10 million sign-ups in the first
four days) state and federal legislation has
popped up in a similar effort to taper unso-
licited e-mail.
The idea is that individuals would pay to
be on a do-not-e-mail list and all e-marketers
would be required to check the list, being pro-
hibited by fines of up to $25,000 from e-mail-
ing people on it.