Up Front: The Secret War for Your In-Box

What do you do when you get an e-mail with "Make $1000 a Day in Your Spare Time!!" in the subject line? You probably hit the Delete key before you get to that second exclamation mark. Not PC World Contributing Editor Daniel Tynan--and thank goodness he doesn't.

For the past couple of years, Tynan has been stockpiling junk e-mail, trying to determine who's sending it and why. "Everybody hates spam, but everybody is getting more of it," by some estimates 50 percent more than in 2000, says Tynan. "So clearly spam works for the senders. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the money is made."

The result is the intriguing story "Spam Inc." Tynan, a former executive editor at this magazine, interviewed bulk e-mailers and their enemies to shed light on the war for your in-box. "Many of the antispammers run ISPs,'' he says. "They're trying to figure out a way to keep spam off their servers, since it costs them so much to handle all that unsolicited mail."

One tactic is to set up "spam traps"--e-mail addresses that exist solely to catch unsolicited messages. Services such as Brightmail monitor spam traps and then employ information from the trapped messages to block similar mailings to their clients.

Spammers Fight Back

Bulk e-mailers, in turn, compile lists of antispammers to avoid being spotted. Some have even set up spam traps of their own: One spammer whom Tynan befriended maintains mailboxes on AOL to find out whether the e-mail he sends to its members gets through. If AOL blocks a mailing, he simply changes the message wording or his Internet address. (Be sure to see all of our latest news about spam.)

Legally, spam falls into a gray area. Some 24 states regulate it; Delaware bans it entirely, though the state has yet to bring any enforcement actions. Congress is considering several antispam laws, including one that would permit fines of up to $500,000 for using a phony subject line or return address. And many trade and advocacy groups have weighed in, among them the Direct Marketing Association and the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail.

Some spam opponents are against half-measures. "You either ought to ban unsolicited bulk e-mail outright or not legislate it at all. A compromise approach will just legitimize spam," says Professor David E. Sorkin of the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Sorkin runs a Web site on the subject.

Should It Be Banned?

In my mind, though, outlawing spam poses problems. What if an unsolicited message is the modern-day equivalent of Paul Revere warning that the British are coming? More prosaically, what if I really do want to Make $1000 a Day in My Spare Time? It's hard to write laws protecting people from their own stupidity without bumping into free-speech issues. That may be why the Federal Trade Commission has mainly attacked spam in which the message itself is allegedly fraudulent.

In the meantime, your best solution lies with outfits like Brightmail, SpamKiller, and Postini. Postini, for example, applies rules to each message that calculate the likelihood of its being spam. "You can set the level of protection you want," Tynan explains. "At maximum protection you'll see little or no spam--but you might miss a real message or two that the system misidentifies. With minimal protection you'll get more bulk mail, but you probably won't miss much." At least that gives you some degree of control.

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