“There is a genuine concern that too much Spam will kill off email. We have not quite got there yet, but it could happen.” There’s probably nobody better qualified to make that kind of statement than Eric Allman, as he’s the guy who invented the first commercial email application. So, it’s no surprise that the media in the UK is reporting on the “Spam epidemic”. It’s estimated that, at least one in seven emails received in the UK is Spam. And in the USA the estimates suggest at least 30% of all email as being of the “Spam variety”. Microsoft now claims that Spam at HotMail makes up about one third of all mail.
In a feature article supporting a drive to stop the flood of Spam in the UK, The Sunday Times recently reported that there could be as few as 150 “Spam kings” responsible for 90% of the world’s unwanted mail. The guy named as THE “Spam King” is Alan Ralsky. Reports say that he’s recently kitted out his home in Detroit with servers which can blast out one billion pieces of his email rubbish a day.
So where is the law to prevent Ralsky and the ilk from bombarding us with their unwanted junk and sleaze? The problem is, much of the law pertaining to, or relevant to email Spam, is just too vague or can be interpreted to suit either side of the argument. And of course, the direct marketing organisations are very keen not to find themselves too inhibited by the introduction of very tight laws which may turn the currently very viable form of promotion into something costly and less viable.
In the UK we rely on the 1998 regulations which deal with the sending of marketing faxes and unsolicited direct marketing calls. By virtue of the fact that these regulations pertain to “telecommunications services”, then by definition they apply to email. Therefore, Spam is illegal in the UK (not that you’d notice of course). 
The only European legislation in force which directly affects Spam throughout member states is the “Distance Selling Directive”. Some EU Member States have other relevant laws. Germany, for instance, has laws based on the opt-in approach to Spam.
The US doesn’t have any federal anti-Spam laws in place. However, Spammers have lost in federal cases which relied on other laws. For example, in December 2000, a man was prosecuted in New York for sending 73 million e-mails advertising p*rn sites. For making the e-mails appear as though they were sent by aol.com, he was convicted for second degree forgery, which carries a seven year maximum sentence.
This was of no help to Steve Rawlinson, Chief Technical Officer with clara.net, a major European ISP based in London. He checked his inbox one day to find 14,000 unsolicited emails waiting for him. He’d been Spammed by a mass mailer who made his mail appear to have come from Rawlinson’s company. All “bounced” mails from the millions sent out had been returned to the apparent sender.
As for Ralsky, although he was taken to court by ISP verizon.net, the outcome was a fairly paltry settlement and agreement never to Spam using verizon again (no doubt he also had the back of his hand slapped too!). Following the posting of Ralsky’s address at his brand new USD 740,000 house, he was given a taste of his own medicine when he started receiving tons and tons of snail mail junk, all subscribed to on his behalf by online anti-Spam
campaigners.
I talk to a lot of professional online marketers around the World, looking for opinions and ideas for solutions to the problems of Spam and how we can more easily get our marketing messages to those who want them without being “headed off at the server filter pass”.
Some agree with the idea mooted by Eric Allman that, if people had to pay for email, then it would be less attractive to Spammers. After all, the whole idea of mass mailing is based around the economics of the “numbers game”. A mass mailer only needs to receive a couple of responses per thousand when dealing in millions in order to get a decent return.
So, how would it work? Well, we charge a penny to everyone who mails us to allow them past our email filters. Then, when we reply to say that we’ve received the email, the penny charged the other way cancels out the first charge! Sounds like a pretty reasonable idea. But what about all of the newsletters and subscription sites I’ve already paid to receive info from? Money has already changed hands here. Do we have to go through it again? Even if it is just a “virtual” financial transaction. Plus: isn’t the Internet supposed to be free? (At least after we’ve paid our ISP’s.)
Whether we look at a scheme for charging or tracking down and jailing the Alan Ralsky’s of this world, it will certainly be a long time before some industry standard, worldwide, legally recognised solution is in place.
Until then, we have to be aware that the intended opt-in recipients of our newsletters, zines etc. are going to take whatever methods available to prevent the tidal wave of Spam.
During the course of writing this article, I’ve checked my inbox three times so far. And on all three occasions, in-between the legitimate stuff I’m anticipating, there’s the Spam.
Some of my email addresses must be on dozens of these spurious mailing lists up for sale. Having just checked my mail, as I say, I see a message from a company which is selling a disc with two and half million email addresses, plus the software to mail to them as a bonus. The message tells me that the lists they sell are 100% pure opt-in. I’m also told that they themselves never send unsolicited email, only to opt-in subscribers: and to get this information to me… they spammed me!
As if by clockwork, there’s my usual Spam about the herbal alternative to Viagra that dozens of people seem to believe I need (except my wife I might add). And with it’s monotonous regularity, my guaranteed p*n*s enlargement (I’m sure they couldn’t possibly make it as big as the d*ck who Spammed me!).
Spam simply is the scourge of the Internet. Of course, there are blacklists, which unfortunately can even make matters worse. And the filters designed to help us avoid it seem only to work in varying degrees of usefulness. A recent study by Giga Information Group found that the best known blacklist, MAPS RBL (Mail Abuse Prevention System Realtime Black List), catches less than 25% of Spam but blocks 34% of good mail. So, this means, it doesn’t eliminate much Spam in the first place, and then, for every Spam mail that’s blocked, it also blocks 1.4 legitimate mails.
So what we’re talking about here is a 24% success rate. But on the other hand, that means a 76% failure rate. Now this can hardly be regarded as successful.
If blacklists don’t work then why not just look at something which does some kind of pattern matching?
Something which works like a spell-checker and spots all those Spammy words and phrases.
Well, of course, this is how many filtering packages work already. But what happens is that, Richard can’t send mail to anyone who knows him as “D*ck”. “Crude” filters look for those words and phrases which are embedded in other words. For instance, you’ll probably never receive any email from people living in Essex in the UK if their address is in the sig file, and maybe no one will ever really find out how much you enjoyed that wonderful bottle of Chardonnay! (you’ll spot it eventually). 
Bayesian analysis is something I’m currently looking at as part of the research for the third edition of my search engine book. Learning machines is a major source of research work for search engines using Bayesian networks for text classification. This type of approach to eliminating Spam is likely to have much more effect than basic Spam filters.
Paul Graham is using Bayesian statistical filtering in his “Plan for Spam”. In particular, he’s working on a web based mail reader application to filter Spam. Based on Paul Graham’s work, there’s now a freeware Spam fighting tool which integrates with Microsoft Outlook 2000x. It’s called Spammunition and uses Bayesian filtering techniques.
I think this is the most likely route for Spam filtering to go. And as an online marketer, the more you know (and the earlier you know) about how you’re being “repelled” by your intended recipients, the better you’ll be able to accommodate.
If you want to get a handle on the way that Spam filtering techniques are moving, you can download Version 0.60 beta of Spammunition here (you’ll also find a link to Paul Graham’s excellent article on a “Plan for Spam”.):
http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/spammunition
If you want to know how well your own email newsletters etc. fair with current email filters, then you can try a fr*e test-run courtesy of SiteBuildIt. If you read the lead story in this issue, you’ll know that SiteBuildIt is a tremendous suite of development tools which also includes a module for creating and emailing your very own newsletter, zine etc. The good folks over there have made the SpamCheck tool freely available. So, before you send out your next mailing, run it through SpamCheck first and find out just how likely you are to get “under the filter wire.”
Send your test email here:
spamcheck-netmarketing106@sitesell.net
But be absolutely certain to put the word TEST (just like that, in caps, no quotes) as the first word in the subject line e.g.
TEST Spammers monthly: How to avoid legitimate email.
By the way, it’s a good idea to run even a test personal email through this checker, just to make sure your sig file isn’t causing you to be dumped.
Finally, MailWasher is a fr*e download which lets you check your email on the server before you bring it in. This way, you can check for, and delete Spam and anything which looks like a virus BEFORE you bring it in. You’ll find MailWasher here:
http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/mailwasher
NB: At the foot of this newsletter I always place a link to the site which sells the software I use for managing and mailing this newsletter and all other email marketing campaigns.
In my opinion, for the price, it’s the best desktop software on the market. If you want to start your own
newsletter, zine or direct response campaigns, then now is really the time to buy it as there’s currently a Christmas discount of 100 dollars. So, here’s the link a little earlier.
http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/mailloop
