Protect Yourself From Spam

Isn’t Spam illegal?/How big of a problem is spam?

What is Spam?

• When is Spam Spam?

• Where does the term “Spam” come from?

• Why do people send Spam?

• How can I tell who the Spam is from?

• How do “spammers” get my address?

• If I “unsubscribe” won’t the Spam stop?

Isn’t Spam illegal?
Clearly Spam is illegal if it promotes an illegal product or service. However, spam legislation is pending in the US and in Europe that would make the mere act of sending unsolicited commercial email illegal in the absence of an existing business relationship. The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial email (CAUCE) applauds the tough proposed European legislation, but opposes the proposed US anti spam legislation which it considers weak and ineffective at stopping spam. Bill S 630 would establish UCE as a legitimate practice. The onus would be upon the recipient to “opt out” of the mailing list by unsubscribing. In the event of non-compliance on the part of the spammer, it would be up to the ISP to trace them and take action (most end-users lack the sophistication to trace an email back to a physical real-world company or individual).

Fines of up to $10 per illegal Spam would be levied.The CAUCE argues that since the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the only enforcing body, given the large number of Spam emails it is unlikely that any serious enforcement would ever take place.

Proposed European legislation is much tougher and many believe it would help get rid of Spam. It will require prior consent from the recipient before receiving unsolicited commercial electronic communications including SMS, fax and email. The directive has already been published in the Official Journal of the Economic and Monetary Union.

• How big of a problem is Spam?

• What are DNS blacklists?

• What is an open relay?

• How can I prevent Spam?

• How does an email Spam filter work?

• I want to send spam free bulk email. How can I be sure my recipients don’t think I’m sending Spam?

• Links

How big of a problem is spam?
Big. Spam is a big problem first of all because it is symptomatic of inefficient, parasitical businesses. The Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coace in what is now known as the Coace Theorem postulated that an inefficient business (one that cannot bear the cost of its own activities) is dangerous to the economy, because to function, it must spread the cost of its activities across a large number of victims. The Coace Theorem cuts close to home where Spam is concerned. Any business that needs to send Spam emails to survive is not a viable business. The benefit to the spammer is disproportionate to the cost borne by the spammer, which is next to nil. More importantly, the cost of Spam removal to the victims is totally disproportionate to the benefit to the spammer. In a free market economy such a grossly inefficient process should cease when property rights are enforced (i.e. the cost is borne by the the party who incurs them).

Spam is a big problem because property rights are difficult or impossible to enforce which makes it hard to get rid of Spam. From the 1800s through the mid 1960s industrials considered it their right to produce and pollute with impunity. The economy could not run without their products. They could not afford to not pollute. It took over two decades of lobbying to move government and industry to another point of view. Yet these were reasonable businesses, with physical assets in the countries of their victims and subject to their legal systems. Consider the spammers in contrast. Any physical assets they may have are irrelevant to their activity, which incidentally, has no borders. They are not subject to the legal systems of their victims. If they become subject to legislation attempting to stop Spam they can find a more favourable environment in another country. The immediate effect of the new European legislation will be to force the spammers offshore rather than to stop junk email. There will be less Spam coming from European countries, but there will not necessarily be any less Spam.

Spam is a big problem because of the shared resources it consumes. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) allow you to surf the Internet, and deliver your email to your email software usually for a flat monthly fee. They must, in turn, purchase bandwidth (the technical term for their own connection to the Internet). The more users they have, the more bandwidth they need. If they have very large numbers of users they may need to purchase additional servers to manage email. These costs are offset by the added revenues of a larger user base. Spam however, increases their need for bandwidth, and increases the load on their email servers with no added revenue to compensate. The added cost must be passed on to the customers, the victims of spammers trespassing on their private cyberproperty. Some very large email servers have been shut down due to Spam overload for extended periods depriving hundreds of thousands of paying customers of their emails. One leading ISP processes about 30 million email messages a day, 30% of which are Spam. The problem of Spam has reached proportions where it threatens the viability of email and of the Internet itself.

Spam is a big problem because of the private resources it consumes. Many business people spend up to fifteen minutes per day reading and deleting their Spam emails. A company with 100 knowledge workers earning an average of $40,000 per year each spending ten minutes per day deleting Spam would experience an added burden of $80,000 per year. This cost would be passed on to Internet users and non-users alike as they purchase products from this company at their local department store.

Spam is a big problem because of number of victims it involves. According to META Group, 5-15% of corporate email is Spam. This is expected to grow to to 15-30% in the near term. This means that the average medium-sized company receives 20,000 Spam emails per day. Taking the above example a little further, if 10 million people each lose 5 minutes a day deleting Spam, in terms of productivity, this could cost the global economy over $4 billion annually, not counting wasted bandwidth, CPU time and network administration time and tools. Based on these assumptions, the global cost of Spam may well be over $5 billion annually.

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