Spam growth rate alarms providers

By CHRIS BARTON

At the risk of stating the obvious, the spam scourge is multiplying. But it's the rate of growth that's alarming internet providers, which are finding the more they filter out junk mail, the more the spammers send.

TelstraClear has been filtering email for its clear.net and paradise.net customers since October when spam accounted for 46 per cent of the mail received. A month later spam was 52 per cent of email. In the first week of December it's 62 per cent.

A similar story comes from internet provider ihug. In September it stopped 5.1 million spam emails and in November, 6.5 million. In the first five days of December there were 1.6 million stopped, suggesting spam emails could reach 10 million this month. For the 29 per cent of its customers who use its voluntary spam filter, ihug said spam accounts for 75 per cent of their email.

Since it implemented its anti-spam filter on November 19, Xtra is also finding up to 68 per cent in worst cases and as low as 38 per cent.

"Yes, it's getting worse. The spammers are getting cleverer at avoiding the filters so you constantly have to be updating to their new techniques," said TelstraClear web marketing manager Michael White.

"It's like the Lord of the Rings - a classic battle of good versus evil."

He said the costs of providing the service were significant - especially the increased storage requirements. TelstraClear has spent about $1 million setting up its Brightmail anti-spam service and expected ongoing costs of about $500,000 a year.

He said the upsurge in spam was directly tied to filtering. "The more spam that is blocked the more spammers need to send to achieve their reply rate."

Ihug marketing manager Philip McIntosh agreed. "It's like when the fish aren't biting you put more hooks on your line."

Costs were mounting and the company had just put on eight new servers to cope with the deluge and had cut back from a month to 14 days the amount of time it held filtered email.

Meanwhile the Government is moving slowly towards legislating against spam. Associate Minister for IT David Cunliffe has written to Justice Minister Phil Goff to ascertain whether an amendment to the Harassment Act would be an appropriate way to deal with spam.

The Government is expected to release a discussion paper on possible legislation early next year.

InternetNZ, the Direct Marketing Association and the Ministry of Economic Development have held discussions regarding developing standards for direct marketers and to develop anti-spam education campaigns.

Xtra spokeswoman Anna Kermode said there should be measures to make fraudulent email illegal, but any spam legislation had to be workable.