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Are Extreme Measures the Answer?

Although the growing onslaught of spam has led some to advocate dire measures such as using white lists, where users only accept mail from senders who are stored in their address books, this measure seems extreme. Critics of white lists point out that a long-lost friend who digs up someone's e-mail address would never be able to get a well-wishing message through, nor would associates who recently changed jobs, or Grandma, who just managed to get online.

Even black lists, which some ISPs use to block mail being sent from known spammers, are starting to lose their following because they must be constantly updated and changed.

While Yahoo's Pollock concedes that the growth of spam is a problem, she doesn't believe extreme measures are in order yet.

In fact, Pollock said part of the apparent spam epidemic can be chalked up to the growth in e-mail users. Additionally, she would like to believe her company is trapping more spam because its filters are more effective.

But it appears that no matter how much fine-tuning ISPs do to their spam-fighting tools, the danger of blocking wanted mail forces them to keep the gates open just wide enough so that a certain amount of spam still gets in.

Added Filters

That's where other methods for fighting spam come into play, such as client-side filters.

Since IHateSpam launched its consumer filter last July, it has experienced dramatic growth, said Eckelberry.

"Our product has gotten good word of mouth," he said. "The amount of rage and anger out there over spam is amazing. People are really fed up."

Spam is becoming increasingly risqué and offensive, which is leading more people to take action against it, Eckelberry said. But although users have been driven to fight a client-side battle against spam, he said he thinks the war will be on the server side, before users have to deal with it.

Filters, no matter where they are located, aren't the only means being used to eliminate spam.

Paying the Price

Many ISPs, like EarthLink, have a group dedicated to tracking down spammers. In fact, EarthLink won a $25 million settlement against a spammer last year, Anderson said.

But such big wins against spammers are rare, and furthermore, some say that current legislation designed to protect consumers from marketing fraud is not sufficient to deal with the problem.

Such is the view of Jason Catlett, president of privacy advocacy group Junkbusters in Green Brook, New Jersey.

"What I've been advocating is legislation that gives people who have been spammed the right to sue the spammer for a small amount of money--$50 to $500," Catlett said.

"User filtering is too late; it's a Band-Aid that doesn't address the problem," he added.

Catlett believes that without legislation hanging above spammers' heads like a sword of Damocles, e-mail could come to a tipping point where there is so much spam that it outnumbers legitimate e-mail, just as Jupiter predicts.

Fighting spammers on a technical scale is not enough, he said, because they are quite sophisticated and evasive in their methods.

Looking for Laws

Catlett isn't the only one proposing new legislation targeting spam. A number of antispam proposals have been introduced in the U.S. Congress, and at least two pieces of legislation have been approved at the committee level in both the House and the Senate, but neither has received full congressional approval.

Both the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, otherwise known as "CAN SPAM" (S. 630), and the Unsolicited Commercial Electronic E-Mail Act (H.R. 718) have languished since receiving committee approval.

The legislative bottleneck has persisted despite the fact that the Direct Marketers Association stated in October of 2001 that it would support federal antispam legislation. The DMA's support is not so surprising, however, given that its 4700 members are also being threatened by the cascade of spam.

"Spam is a huge concern for us because consumers are just erasing everything. They don't know the difference between spam and legitimate marketing," said Christina Duffney, a spokesperson for the DMA. Spam's impediment to legitimate marketing is especially concerning in a down economy, she added, when many DMA members are turning to e-mail because it is less expensive.

Multifaceted Approach

But while a number of proposals, such as implementing a labeling requirement for unsolicited commercial e-mail, are being kicked around, many experts believe that legislation is not the silver bullet. The problem is not only that spam is different for everyone, but also that the nature of spam is constantly changing as spammers work to stay one step ahead of their pursuers.

In fact, a group of Internet experts attending a spam workshop hosted by The Global Internet Project in Honolulu recently outlined their case for taking a multifaceted approach to tackling spam. The group, which included senior executives from major technology and Internet firms, endorsed the adoption of new spam-fighting technologies, end-user education, and rigid enforcement of fraud laws currently on the books.

They warned against looking to new legislation to fight the problem, however, saying that current laws against fraudulent representations already exist, and citizens need to be better educated on how to protect themselves.

As sensible as this multitiered approach seems, dreams of a silver bullet have not died. That's why programmers such as Graham and Yerazunis are working to pull the spam weed out by its roots by destroying its business model.

Yerazunis figures spam filters must be able to rout out at least 99.5 percent of spam to make the cost of sending unsolicited commercial e-mail the same as that of sending regular bulk mail.

And while the mail filter Yerazunis created is not fit for the mass market, he hopes one based on his programming language will come to the rescue soon.

Even if e-mail users are armed with powerful filters, the main ISPs must jump on board to significantly reduce the response to spam. This will most likely happen if consumers keep up the pressure to find a solution to the spam problem. After all, it behooves the ISPs to invest in spam-fighting technologies--not just to serve their customers, but also to keep their own costs in check.

Because, as Graham pointed out, spam is a business and the hassle e-mail users and ISPs experience is just collateral damage.

"This is a war we have to win," he said.