Spam marks double figures
Published: 13 Apr 2004 10:35 BST
Expensive annoyance
Internet giants such as America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft have poured technical resources into solving the problem, and legislators have moved to limit the worst practices. Last week, prosecutors successfully won a guilty verdict in a criminal case that saw the so-called Buffalo Spammer sentenced with up to seven years in prison for alleged identity theft and forgery that enabled him to send more than 800 million email messages through Internet service provider EarthLink.
Yet the spam problem has only seemed to grow worse each year, as spammers adopt potent new tactics that make Canter's Perl script seem quaint by comparison. In a worst-case scenario, spammers may now work hand-in-hand with overseas organised crime groups, employing Trojan-horse attacks that can turn PCs into "zombie" machines that spew out spam under the noses of their unwitting owners. Infected machines can then be rented or sold to underhanded marketers looking for a cheap way to send out millions of messages in hopes of garnering a handful of sales leads.
Astonishingly, some people actually respond to spam messages, keeping the whole system afloat. Even outrageous (and by now, well-known) frauds such as the Nigerian email scam have duped some victims. Since spam is so cheap -- even free to the sender using some methods -- criminals are more than willing to annoy hundreds of millions of people for the chance of cashing in on one mark.
The problem is so bad that spam now threatens the very future of email. Once billed as the Net's killer app for both business and consumers, email senders are now largely aware that their messages may not be seen or read, because they may have been accidentally swept aside by anti-spam measures. For really important matters, use the phone, some now advise.
To be sure, spam isn't the only thing that's changed since Canter first launched his message board script. The Internet itself is more overtly commercial than it once was, having been transferred from government to mostly private control. Once policed primarily by social pressure and rules of etiquette, email marketing is now ruled by myriad state and federal laws, and overburdened companies and consumers now have their pick of dozens of software products claiming the ability to manage the deluge.
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