Unwanted or Spam Email

Annoying, it clogs up your email and it's growing by the millions every year. Spam email has become so widespread that some people think it could swamp the Internet. We investigate this online epidemic and reveals how you can wage war against spam.
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Do any of these sound familiar to you? If they do, that's because you've probably received dozens of email messages just like these every time you check your mail. These aren't just any ordinary emails. Formally called unsolicited commercial emails (UCEs), they better known as spam; a phenomenon that many believe is the scourge of the Internet.
"So what?", you say. "Just hit the delete button and they're gone." And so they are; for now, at least. Stop and think about this. If you receive 12 of these every day ; and that's not an unrealistic figure; then that adds up to 4,380 emails annually. And the downloading of them is coming out of your badwidth and hogging up your disk space. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Caslon Analytics (http://www.caslon.com.au) cite studies claiming that the number of direct marketing email messages bombarding the Internet will rose from 2.8 billion in 1998, up to 236 billion in 2005!

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Spam is the nickname given to an email message that is sent to a large number of people, most of whom have not knowingly asked to receive them. The majority of spam is used to promote a product or service and normally ask people to respond by replying to the email directly, or by clicking on a link to a specific Web site mentioned in the email. So, if nobody ever asks to receive these messages, how come you; and everyone you know with an email address; get deluged by spam every day?
Spammers, be they individuals or companies, continually trawl the Internet to collect as many addresses as they can to send their messages to. They can pluck your email address from just about anywhere you've made it publicly available on the Internet; on Web pages, in chat rooms, on Web-based discussion groups or message boards, through instant messaging services or on any mailing lists you subscribe to.
Some companies specialise in compiling huge databases and mailing lists of people's email addresses, which they sell to other businesses that promote their products and services using spam emails.
There is more than one type of spam. If you've ever given your email address to a business Web site when you've ordered a product, or have emailed an organisation to ask a specific question, chances are you'll start receiving email advertisements or other forms of communication from them. This is called 'acquaintance spam' you haven't exactly asked to receive commercial emails from them, but you have initiated contact with them, thereby demonstrating a possible interest in their products or services.

Breakout
Pop-Up Windows - Spam by Any Other Name?
By now, most of us are so accustomed to banner ads that we can largely ignore them. For advertisers, however, being ignored is a fate worse than death.
Enter the pop-up window. These are mini Web browser windows that literally 'pop up' when you're visiting another Web site. They obstruct your view of the Web page you actually want to see, so you have to manually click them shut. You cannot fail to notice the product being advertised when you turn them off which is just what advertisers want.
Then there is the 'pop-under' window, which open up when you visit a Web site, but sit under your main browser screen. When you leave the site, the pop-under becomes visible and you have to click them shut.
A survey conducted by online marketer Valentine Radford (http://www.valentineradford.com/) found that, although 28 per cent of people found online advertising annoying, 72 per cent of people "absolutely hated" pop-up ads.
There are dozens of banner ad and pop-up ad blocking software programs that you can install on your computer. The Pop Up Killer Info Web site (http://www.popup-killer.info) has a directory reviewing some of the more popular (no pun intended) anti-pop-up programs available online.

Spam and the Law
Most countries that have attempted to regulate spamming have done so under the provisions of their existing privacy or telecommunications legislation.
In Australia, a combination of Federal Government legislation and guidelines, along with industry codes of practice, are now applicable to direct marketing activities, including spam emails.
The Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner (http://www.privacy.gov.au) has stated that businesses with annual turnover of A$3 million or more are bound by the Privacy Act 1998 (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/pa1988108). As such, they must stop sending unsolicited emails at consumers' requests, unless that business originally collected their information in order to send them direct marketing material. The Federal Privacy Commissioner has also stated that in all other cases, businesses need your consent to send direct marketing material to you. If it is impractical for a business to obtain your consent, they must provide you with the option to not receive such material, which is commonly referred to as 'opting out'.
The Internet Industry Association (http://www.iia.net.au), in their draft Privacy Code of Practice, says that subscribers to the Code "will not send online direct marketing to individuals without first obtaining their consent."

How Can You Avoid Being Spammed?
Sadly, there is no way you can completely eliminate spam from your life it is too widespread and spammers seem able to pluck your email address from the most remote corners of the Internet!
There are, however, some techniques you can use to avoid being added to bulk email lists and thereby reducing the amount of spam clogging up your mailbox:

Conceal Your Real Email Address
Your email address is all that spammers need to bombard you with bulk emails, so any steps you can take to conceal your address will help reduce the chances of being added to their mailing lists.
Simple measures such as using a false email address when you post a message to USENET newsgroups can work, as these are one of the online forums that spammers comb using specially designed software to collect email addresses. If you have your own home page or if you post messages to Web-based message boards, use a false email address where you can.
These are admittedly drastic measures, which defeat the ultimate purpose of the email and the Internet being able to communicate with anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world.
There are other alternatives to concealing your email address. For example, Sneakemail (http://sneakemail.com) is a free service that you can use to generate disposable email addresses that you can use on the Internet. To open a Sneakemail account, you'll need to create your own unique username and password, as well as provide Sneakemail with whatever genuine email address of yours that you want protected by Sneakemail's mail system.
Every time you are asked to give out an email address online, you log-in to your Sneakemail account online and create a new email address for yourself.
When emails are sent to any of your Sneakemail addresses, the messages are sent to Sneakemail, which will redirect them to your real address. If you choose to reply to any of these messages, your replies will be redirected through Sneakemail's servers, so that your true email address remains concealed.
;Perhaps the beast feature of Sneakemail is that, should any of your fake Sneakemail addresses start to receive spam, you can dispose of that email address, so that any spam sent to it will be automatically deleted by Sneakemail and never even reach you!
SpamMotel (http://www.spammotel.com) operates in a similar fashion. You can use this Web-based service in conjunction with your existing email program and use SpamMotel to generate special email addresses if you don't want to use your private address online.
Prior to sending out your SpamMotel email address, your desktop SpamMotel icon will generate a pop-up box into which you can type yourself a reminder note, specifying why and to whom you are giving out this address. Whenever someone responds to your SpamMotel address, it is forwarded to your private email address, along with your reminder note. If any of your SpamMotel addresses are being spammed, you can log on to the SpamMotel Web site and delete or suspend any of the addresses you've created.

Install Filters to Block Spam
Spam filtering software is another tool you can use to at least reduce the flow of incoming spam, if not eradicate it altogether. There are dozens of spam filter programs available for you to download as freeware or as shareware programs that require a nominal fee.
Email Remover (http://eremover.bizhosting.com and on our cover CD) is a freeware program that operates like a standard email program when it connects to your email server. The difference is that Email Remover only downloads the first few lines of each incoming email, letting you see if it is spam or otherwise. You can then choose to delete any spam emails without actually downloading them.
Spambam (http://www.epage.com.au/spambam) is an Australian spam filtering program that lets you specify what emails you want to receive and how you manage incoming spam. Spambam acts as a proxy mail server, so that when you send and receive emails, your email client software will connect to Spambam, which retrieves your email for you. Spambam will simultaneously crosscheck any incoming mail against its own 'Blacklist' of known spam domain names, spammers and spam mailing programs. Any messages matched with the Blacklist can be sorted into a separate folder or deleted altogether, according to your specifications.
Spamstalker (http://www.spamstalker.com) is a shareware spam filter that claims to be able to remove your email address from spam mailing lists. Once installed on your computer, it automatically responds to spam emails by notifying the automated spamming software or individual spammer that your email address is no longer valid. Spamstalker retains legitimate email messages on your ISP's server for you to download using your preferred email software program and records how many spam emails you receive from any given address. Spamstalker's built-on IPTracer utility also lets you locate the administrator of the server sending you spam emails.

Ask Spammers to Stop Emailing You
Finding out who exactly is spamming you can be difficult, but it isn't impossible. The Spam IDentifier (http://www.lpsci.com/spamid/) is an online search tool that lets you find out which IP address or domain name is hosting and relaying spam messages, so you can forward the spam to them and ask them to stop sending such messages to your email.
JunkBusters (http://www.junkbusters.com) invites you to complete their JunkBusters Declaration, specifying which companies you want to receive information from, which JunkBusters will forward on to direct marketing companies on your behalf.

Join Anti-Spam Groups
They say there's strength in numbers. If that's the case, then there is an army of anti-spam activists mobilising around the world, if the number of anti-spam organisations is anything to go by.
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Australia (CAUBE) (http://www.caube.org.au) is Australia's leading anti-spam organisation. Comparable overseas groups include Netizens Against Gratuitous Spamming (http://www.nags.org) and Spam.Abuse.Net (http://www.spam.abuse.net)

SMS: The new spam frontier
If you thought spam was confined to your in-box, think again. Direct marketers are turning their attention to the booming short messaging service (SMS) market amongst mobile phone users.
It's easy to see why: Telstra (http://www.telstra.com.au/investor) stated in its 2001 annual report that 70 million SMS messages are sent each month by its subscriber base. Optus (http://www.optus.com.au) claimed that, in March 2001, its mobile phone customers were sending nearly 6.5 million messages per month. In fact, SMS traffic at both carriers was up by 100 per cent over the previous year.
Australian mobile phone users can receive SMS advertisements from Australian and overseas direct marketing companies. Responding to this trend, the Australian Communications Industry Forum (http://www.acif.org.au) released a draft Interoperator SMS Issues Industry Code for public comment in September 2001.
One of the draft Code's requirements is that SMS marketing originators only send messages to those customers that have requested them, or have given prior consent to receiving such messages. The draft Code also requires consumers to be given easy-to-use mechanisms to opt-out of receiving any more SMS marketing messages.

Will Spam Kill the Net?
Spam has become so widespread and so disruptive that some fear it could strangle the flow of information on the Internet.
The Australian anti-spam organisation CAUBE.AU has declared that once the volume of bulk emails exceeds that of legitimate emails, then it will "become difficult or impossible to find the legitimate email amongst all the junk once this point has been reached, the value of email has been destroyed."
CAUBE.AU stresses that we pay a real financial cost every time we receive a spam email. Bulk emails, they argue, add to the cost of your ISP connections, because they increase the length of time you spend retrieving mail and the amount of data that you download. These are significant increases, given that most ISPs charge their customers on the basis of how much time they spend connected to the Net, or by the volume of data they download every month.
But will spam kill the Internet? Eric Allman fears that it could. Creator of the world's first Internet mail program in 1981, and now Chief Technology Officer of Sendmail (http://www.sendmail.com), Allman told Silicon.com that "there is a genuine concern that too much spam will kill off email".
"We haven't quite got there yet," he said, "but it could happen."

Breakout
Joey vs. the Spammers
Like most of us, Joey McNicol gets spam emails. Unlike most of us, Joey decided to do something about it. He tracked down the company that was sending him spam and asked them to stop doing so. Now he finds himself at the centre of a landmark court case that could have significant implications for the legal status of spam email marketing, both locally and internationally.
After extensive online searching, Joey discovered the name and contact details of the company that had sent him spam email The Which Company Pty. Ltd. (trading as T3 Direct), based in Western Australia. Joey claims he contacted them by telephone and email, asking them to remove his email address from their mailing lists. Dissatisfied with their response, Joey published an account of his experience on his personal Web site, Let's Fight Spammers (http://www.vtgts.com/auspam.htm). He also posted messages to anti-spam newsgroups, referring people to his home page.
The Which Company issued Joey with a 'Writ of Summons' in May 2002, reportedly seeking damages of over A$43,000. In June 2002, West Australian ISP Swiftel Communications (http://www.swiftel.com.au), OzEmail (http://www.ozemail.com.au) and WebCentral (http://www.webcentral.com.au) disconnected T3 Direct from their services for sending unsolicited bulk email. As of this writing, Joey's legal representatives were applying for a summary judgement in order to prevent the case going to trial. Since then Joey has posted a letter to the Crikey Web site (http://www.crikey.com.au) outlining his account of the dispute, while his supporters have created the Joey Fights Spam site (http://joefightsspam.org) to publicise his case.
An "independent supporter" of McNicol has set up the t3-v-mcnicol.ilaw.com.au site (http://t3-v-mcnicol.ilaw.com.au). It provides a detailed record of the media coverage of the lawsuit and details of how interested parties can make donations to McNicol's legal defence trust fund.

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