Spam Jam

E-mail access at Brookmeade Hardware and Supply in Nashville, Tenn., is limited, to say the least. The company’s computer technician screens all incoming and outgoing e-mail. E-mail addresses are not available through the company’s website, and employees with addresses cannot hand them out freely. Even Internet access is restricted to just a few computer terminals.

The super-tight controls started early this year after the company’s owner, Bill Nourse, found an inappropriate joke on an employee’s desk. She received it, unsolicited, via e-mail.

Brookmeade’s new e-mail restrictions have increased worker productivity (employees can’t waste time surfing the Web for personal use), reduced the threat of computer viruses, and resulted in one more positive effect:

“We don’t get much spam,” says Nourse. “As a small company, we are very vulnerable. If we had e-mail available for every employee, there’s no telling how many e-mails would be scattered all over the world or who could end up with our addresses.”

Nourse is lucky. According to Radicati Group, a market research firm, 32 percent of all e-mail messages received are unsolicited junk mail. In fact, 2.3 billion so-called spam messages are sent every single day.

A Pricey Nuisance
Spam is the term given to unsolicited mass commercial e-mail, even bulk messages from legitimate companies. Basically, if you didn’t ask for it then it is spam.

The most common types of junk e-mail are get-rich-quick schemes, pharmaceutical ads (herbal Viagra, weight-loss drugs), and links to sexually explicit websites. Unfortunately, spam is tough to control.

“A computer can’t tell an e-mail you requested from one you didn’t,” says John Mozena, spokesman for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE).

Of course, spam is more than just a minor annoyance — it actually costs businesses money. IT administrators complain that unwanted e-mail needlessly slows corporate servers. To keep up, businesses must pay for more bandwidth and better computer hardware. There are also the less tangible costs related to spam, such as the salaries of employees who manage the systems and who must delete all that spam.

“Spam takes away from my employees’ most important resource — their time,” says Reggie Peterson, IT/Data Center Manager at Heartland Paper in Sioux Falls, S.D. About 100 of the 5,000 e-mail messages the company receives each day are spam.

Techies worry that without proper regulation, unsolicited e-mail could completely undermine the growth of e-commerce.

“There’s no reason that companies should have to bear some of the costs of a marketer that hijacks their resources to advertise to their employees on company time and on company equipment for free,” says Mozena.

Spam also brings up a whole host of potentially pricey liability issues. Businesses are beginning to fear that an employee who receives a spam e-mail that contains explicit material might sue the employer for failing to block it.
“We know people who have been fired over sending inappropriate jokes,” says Nourse.

Regulation Frustration
There are no federal laws regulating spam (except when spam perpetuates fraudulent claims and scams), although 33 states do have some laws on the book. Last year California banned unsolicited commercial text messages to cell phones. Slowly but surely, Congress is taking an interest in stopping unsolicited e-mail, but anti-spam activists say their efforts aren’t enough.

“People are drowning in spam, and the proposals Congress has been producing just tell people to swim harder and apply to the government for the occasional life raft,” says Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters, a privately funded anti-spam advocacy group.

IT professionals are pushing for strong consumer rights measures that would allow e-mail users to sue spammers in small claims court. This would be similar to laws passed to stop junk faxes, which overran businesses in the 1980s, and current efforts to squash telemarketing.

“Spam is going the route of telemarketing,” says Peterson. “The more people it annoys, the bigger the problem is going to get. Once it annoys the wrong people, it will be eliminated just as is starting to happen with telemarketing.”

Spam Stoppers?
Unfortunately, there is no foolproof method for preventing spam.
“I hate to say it, but if there was something that really stopped spam, we would all have done it,” says Mozena. “There is no silver bullet.”

There are some steps distributors can take, however, to discourage spammers. First, it is helpful to understand how spam works. The marketer purchases a vast e-mail list from a techie who has used a scavenger bot, or a program that electronically “harvests” e-mail addresses. The marketer then uses special software that can send one e-mail to millions of addresses with a click of the mouse.

The key, therefore, is to outwit the scavenger bots (which is easier said than done). Basically, this means you should not display your e-mail address in public any more than is necessary.

• Don’t put e-mail addresses on the company website. If you must, then do not list them as click-to-e-mail links, which means the user can simply click on the address to send an e-mail. Instead, spell out the address, including the “at” and “dot.” Scavenger bots are only programmed to search for traditional e-mail addresses.

• Rather than putting an e-mail address on every page of your site, have it on only one page and preferably not the home page.

• Don’t post to Internet discussion boards or news groups, chat online, join mailing lists, respond to unsolicited e-mail, or allow your e-mail to be included in an online membership directory. These actions make you an easy target for spammers. If you must do online posting, consider having two e-mail addresses so you can closely guard at least one.

• Don’t open suspicious e-mail if possible. Of course, this is not always an easy call. “A businessperson can’t necessarily not open e-mail from someone they don’t know,” says Mozena. “Spammers use sneaky subject lines, like ‘information you requested,’ so you have to open it because it could be someone legitimate who wants to do business with you.”

• Be cautious about sites where you can register to have your e-mail address removed from spammers lists. Some are ineffective and others actually add your address to the lists.

Even if you’ve done all the right things, spammers can still happen upon your e-mail address, thanks to something called a “dictionary attack.” This is a program that allows a computer to try likely combinations of names and numbers at common e-mail servers (for example, john1@aol.com). “Then they blast them out and hope they stick,” says Mozena. It is important to use a unique e-mail address whenever possible.

There is also computer software that can reduce junk e-mail. Although nothing stops spam entirely, these programs can eliminate 80 to 90 percent of the unwanted e-mails that land in your in box.

There are two types of this software: server side and client side. With the first, the e-mail server examines every piece of mail coming in and out of the entire system and stops anything it considers spam. The second is installed in the computer terminal so messages can be scanned and flagged at the user’s desktop.

Server-side software is typically preferred because it stops spam from ever reaching the user’s computer, which can prevent viruses and minimize traffic on the network. However, the software is much more complicated and is best suited to companies with a dedicated IT person. For example, if a valid message is flagged as spam — and this can happen quite often — it will have to be retrieved from the server by someone with extensive computer knowledge.

Client-side software, on the other hand, allows each user to decide how strictly their e-mail will be monitored. Most often, junk e-mail comes into a folder separate from their Inbox. This allows for mislabeled e-mails to be quickly located and read. This type of program is fairly straightforward for most novice computer users.

Server-side software starts at about $1,000 and client-side programs are around $25 per computer.

If you do receive spam, report it to the Federal Trade Commission (e-mail the message to uce@ftc.gov). The FTC uses these unsolicited e-mails to pursue legal action against spammers. Also, if a “remove me” request is not honored, fill out the FTC’s online complaint form.

But don’t get too optimistic about these measures. Those in the know say there is really only one surefire way to stop spam (especially once you’ve made it onto their list). “Cutting electrical power will do it,” says Catlett. “Anything short of that is probably going to let at least some spam through.”

That’s why Nourse has decided to play it safe. Until his customers demand more electronic communication, he plans to keep a tight lid on e-mail.

“I’m just watching and learning from how others do it,” says Nourse. “When the time comes for us to expand usage, there will have to be a lot of rules in place.”

Put Junk In Its Place

According to its website, “the mission of JUNKBUSTERS... is to free the world from junk communications.”

This free service helps consumers (and businesses) cut down on the amount of junk mail they receive with handy, helpful forms that can be mailed to the source. The site also has regularly updated information on junk mail, telemarketing and spam that will keep business owners up-to-date on news and legislation.

A link away is access to the new “Do Not Call” registry. If you haven’t signed up already, you’re just a few keystrokes away from fewer dinner-time telemarketer interruptions.

There is also a “For Businesses” section that provides advice on your own marketing messages and strategies. Junkbuster’s site contains a list of e-mail filtering software, as well.

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