your net:// Too much spam can ruin a 9-year-old's appetite

By CHRIS BARTON

They arrived in the space of two weeks at my nine-year-old daughter's Hotmail address. Subject lines, often in capital letters (what they call "shouting" in cyberspace): CUT YOUR BILLS IN HALF NOW!!; ALERT! FREE INVESTMENT OFFER STOCK PICK!; TEEN ****** THAT WILL DO ANYTHING! (offensive word censored, but not in the email); ARE YOU HORNY? Earn up to $1000 or more per week in your spa; Shave off inches in one hour guaranteed!; Info request - (the body of the e-mail on this one purports to be a response to a request about a herbal Viagra-like medication).

They came from weird addresses - certainly people we had never heard of: ewbum@dodo.sk; annasunwoo@udac.se; onyxdrake@weintl.com; andi1223@itek.de; wolfman61@fernuni-hagen.de; viiking@soton.ac.uk; and cowboy6834@ruu.nl boundary=.

Not good. The invasion of privacy by spam - unsolicited email - is bad enough for an adult to have to deal with.

"Oooh!," said Monika when she saw some of the headlines.

"Yes," I said taking over control of the PC. "I'm going to get rid of that."

"But what is it?"

"It's advertising for stuff you don't want to buy - a bit like the junk mail we get in our real letterbox - only this stuff is worse. It comes from not nice people."

I click "block sender" for all the offending entries and they disappear. It's a relatively new function at Hotmail - something the free web-based e-mail service run by Microsoft is doing to combat a rising problem. I also click on "options" to add some filtering constraints to the e-mail Monika can receive as well as activating the "bulk mail" feature that channels certain types of mail into a separate folder, not Monika's inbox.

Since then, things have improved with only one dodgy spam - THE BEST XXX SITE ON THE WEB GUARANTEED!, from osh76@seed.net.tw, getting trapped in the bulk mail folder.

But I'm not happy. Monika has had her account for a couple of years and nothing like this has happened before. I'd made sure when she signed up that she didn't inadvertently allow her e-mail address to be made available to other Hotmail users or anyone else.

So I asked Bruce Simpson from Aardvark, one of the leading crusaders against spam, what gives? Surely Hotmail security hasn't been compromised by spammers, or worse still, its addresses are being sold?

"You would hope not," he says. "No, both those scenarios are unlikely. The truth is spammers are getting cleverer and have all sorts of ways to get your e-mail address. A lot of the time they're just guessing - going through a list of names that might be used for email."

But it all seems so pointless. The stuff spammers advertise are such obvious cons. Surely few respond?

"On the net the phrase, 'there's a sucker born every minute' really is true," he says.

"It's also self-perpetuating - one of the top items for sale by spam are junk e-mail lists and services."

So is there no escape? Is spam something we just have to put up with?

"I hate to use the words legislation and internet in the same sentence, but with spam I think something is necessary - along the lines of what is being proposed in the United States at present and similar to legislation there that has been successful in stopping junk faxes."

As he points out, all spam - even if much of it uses phoney e-mail addresses - can be traced. Otherwise what's the point of sending it to you? Somewhere along the way the sender wants the recipient to respond and that information coupled with tracing techniques means the originator of the spam can usually be tracked down.

In his brave new "cyber-jurisdiction" world - resulting from agreements between countries to police such matters - users would simply forward unwanted spam to the appropriate authorities in each country enabling spammers to be tracked down and fined.

There are quite a few organisations on the net already doing some of what Mr Simpson proposes including some vigilante groups such as MAPS and ORBS which keep "blackhole" lists of spam sources. He has at times used a novel technique to give spammers a taste of their own medicine. One way spammers get e-mail addresses is to send out "spiders" - automated programs that trawl the web looking for something known as "mailto" tags which point to contact e-mail addresses listed on web sites. Knowing how this works, he created a web site that was a list of spammers e-mail addresses, each with their own mailto tag. When the spiders next came calling, they greedily harvested the e-mail addresses - only to find on using them they ended up spamming other spammers.

But he warns that you need to know what you're doing if you want to embark on a spam retaliation project.

Many spammers disguise their sending address, often with someone else's domain name - meaning you could end up targeting someone completely innocent.

He's also not totally opposed to genuine direct marketeers using e-mail, but only if it's an "opt-in" service. That means subscribing to a service which will send you special offers on products and services of your choice. A proper opt-in marketeer will notify you by e-mail that you have subscribed and ask a second time for your confirmation.

As he points out: "There's a place for these services. Everyone likes a bargain. My only problem is that I haven't come across that many real bargains on the net, yet."

So if there was one thing to advise recipients of spam what would it be?

"Never, never reply - not even to the reasonable ones that say if you've received this email inadvertently please click here or send an e-mail back saying 'unsubscribe'. Most often if you do that, you've just ended up putting yourself on the top of a spammer's premium list."

The many flavours of spam

Besides the waste of time and the cost to you and your internet provider in delivering it, the main problem with spam is what it sells - mostly scams, ripoffs and cons. The more common types are:

* Chain letters and pyramid schemes promising a big return for a small investment - "Get Rich Quick" or "Make Money Fast" schemes. Typically these suggest you can get rich by sending money to the top name on a list, removing that name, adding your name to the bottom of the list and forwarding the message.

* Offers of phone sex lines and ads for pornographic websites.

* Scams that suggest money can be made by becoming a spammer, with offers of software for collecting e-mail addresses and sending spam, or offers of bulk e-mailing services.

* Stock offerings for unknown new corporations and bogus currency exchange scams.

* Offers for quack health products and illegally pirated software, known as "warez."

Links:

Hotmail

Aardvark

MAPS

ORBS