E-mail has become the subject of much abuse, in the form of both spamming and E-mail worm programs. Both of these flood the in-boxes of E-mail users with junk E-mails, wasting their time and money, and often carrying offensive, fraudulent, or damaging content. This links help in the efforts to stop E-mail abuse and ensure that E-mail continues to be usable in the face of these threats.

Links

• BlackList checker Check if the domain is blacklisted by Open Relay DataBase (ORDB) or Distributed Sender Blackhole List (DSBL).
• Fight Spam on the Internet!
• Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
• Spamfo.co.uk Covers the latest news on junk email, scams, fraud, legal aspects and reviews of software and services out there to help you reduce the ‘spam’.
• California lawyer who sues spammers
• Address Munging FAQ: Spam-Blocking Your Email Address
• Challenge/Response at the SMTP Level: It may be possible to implement a challenge/response SPAM protection system using custom SMTP Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs) that include an HTML confirmation hyperlink.
• Countering Spam by Using Ham Passwords (Email Passwords)
• “Countering Spam with Ham-Authenticated Email and the Guarded Email Protocol” describes a challenge/response system
• [8] A GPL’ed minimal CAPTCHA C/R system.
• Spam-proofing the mail system; Linux Weekly News; December 17, 2003.
• hide email addresses on web sites with JavaScript or letter encoding
• Alternative way to hide email addresses on web sites with inline CSS
• Hiding Email Addresses A comprehensive list of methods on how to hide email addresses in source code from spam bots.

The California legislature found that spam cost United States organizations alone more than $10 billion in 2004, including lost productivity and the additional equipment, software, and manpower needed to combat the problem.

Spam’s direct effects include the consumption of computer and network resources, and the cost in human time and attention of dismissing unwanted messages. In addition, spam has costs stemming from the kinds of spam messages sent, from the ways spammers send them, and from the arms race between spammers and those who try to stop or control spam. In addition, there are the opportunity cost of those who forgo the use of spam-afflicted systems. There are the direct costs, as well as the indirect costs borne by the victims – both those related to the spamming itself, and to other crimes that usually accompany it, such as financial theft, identity theft, data and intellectual property theft, virus and other malware infection, child pornography, fraud, and deceptive marketing.

The methods of spammers are likewise costly. Because spamming contravenes the vast majority of ISPs’ acceptable-use policies, most spammers have for many years gone to some trouble to conceal the origins of their spam. E-mail, Usenet, and instant-message spam are often sent through insecure proxy servers belonging to unwilling third parties. Spammers frequently use false names, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information to set up “disposable” accounts at various Internet service providers. In some cases, they have used falsified or stolen credit card numbers to pay for these accounts. This allows them to quickly move from one account to the next as each one is discovered and shut down by the host ISPs.

The costs of spam also include the collateral costs of the struggle between spammers and the administrators and users of the media threatened by spamming. See [1].

Many users are bothered by spam because it impinges upon the amount of time they spend reading their e-mail. Many also find the content of spam frequently offensive, in that pornography is one of the most frequently advertised products. Spammers send their spam largely indiscriminately, so pornographic ads may show up in a work place e-mail inbox—or a child’s, the latter of which is illegal in many jurisdictions. Recently, there has been a noticeable increase in spam advertising websites that contain child pornography.

Some spammers argue that most of these costs could potentially be alleviated by having spammers reimburse ISPs and individuals for their material. There are two problems with this logic: first, the rate of reimbursement they could credibly budget is not nearly high enough to pay the direct costs; and second, the human cost (lost mail, lost time, and lost opportunities) is basically unrecoverable.

E-mail spam exemplifies a tragedy of the commons: spammers use resources (both physical and human), without bearing the entire cost of those resources. In fact, spammers commonly do not bear the cost at all. This raises the costs for everyone. In some ways spam is even a potential threat to the entire e-mail system, as operated in the past.

Since e-mail is so cheap to send, a tiny number of spammers can saturate the Internet with junk mail. Although only a tiny percentage of their targets are motivated to purchase their products (or fall victim to their scams), the low cost sometimes provides a sufficient conversion rate to keep spamming alive. Furthermore, even though spam appears not to be economically viable as a way for a reputable company to do business, it suffices for professional spammers to convince a tiny proportion of gullible advertisers that it is viable for those spammers to stay in business. Finally, new spammers go into business every day, and the low costs allow a single spammer to do a lot of harm before finally realizing that the business is not profitable.

Some companies and groups “rank” spammers; spammers who make the news are sometimes referred to by these rankings (Spamhaus’ “TOP 10 spam service ISPs”, The 10 Worst ROKSO Spammers ). The necessary secretiveness of the operations makes uncertainty about how they actually determine “how bad” a spammer is unavoidable. Also, spammers may target different networks to different extents, depending on how successful they are at attacking the target. Thus considerable resources are employed to actually measure the amount of spam generated by a single person or group. For example, victims that use common antispam hardware, software or services provide opportunities for such tracking. Nevertheless, such rankings should be taken with a grain of salt.

To better understand the cost of spam to an organization, MX Logic Email Defense has posted a cost of spam calculator on their website.

Continuously updated statistics from postini track the ebb and flow of e-mail abuse without ranking spammers.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

E-mail and other forms of spamming have been used for purposes other than advertisements. Many early Usenet spams were religious or political in nature. Serdar Argic, for instance, spammed Usenet with historical revisionist screeds. A number of evangelists have spammed Usenet and e-mail media with preaching messages. A growing number of criminals are also using spam to perpetrate various sorts of fraud, and in some cases have used it to lure people to locations where they have been kidnapped, held for ransom and even murdered [1].

DoS spam

Spamming has also been used as a denial of service (“DoS”) tactic, particularly on Usenet. By overwhelming the readers of a newsgroup with an inordinate number of nonsense messages, legitimate messages can be lost and computing resources are consumed. Since these messages are usually forged (that is, sent falsely under regular posters’ names) this tactic has come to be known as sporgery (from spam + forgery). This tactic has for instance been used by partisans of the Church of Scientology against the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup (see Scientology vs. the Internet) and by spammers against news.admin.net-abuse.email, a forum for mail administrators to discuss spam problems. Applied to e-mail, this is termed mailbombing. The Usenet Meow Wars (circa 1996) were DoS attacks on various newsgroups aimed at specific posters, thus disrupting the newsgroups where they were active. The DoS attacks launched by Hipcrime, which continue today, are more specifically crafted as DoS attacks on entire newsgroups. The alt.sex newsgroups were rendered virtually uninhabitable by commercial porn site spammers, partially for advertising purposes and partially to destroy a perceived free competitor. (This spawned the creation of the moderated, unspammable soc.sexuality newsgroups.)

In a handful of cases, forged e-mail spam has been used as a tool of harassment. The spammer collects a list of addresses as usual, then sends a spam to them signed with the name of the person he wishes to harass. Some recipients, angry that they received spam and seeing an obvious “source”, will respond angrily or pursue various sorts of revenge against the apparent spammer, the forgery victim. A widely known victim of this sort of harassment was Joe’s CyberPost, which has lent its name to the offense: it is known as a joe job. Such joe jobs have been most often used against antispammers: in more recent examples, Steve Linford of Spamhaus Project and Timothy Walton, a California attorney, have been targeted. Sometimes victims (such as ROKSO-listed spammers) are subscribed to lists that don’t practice verified opt-in, such as magazine subscriptions and e-mail newsletters, a practise known as subscriptionbombing.

Spammers have also abused resources set up for purposes of anonymous speech online, such as anonymous remailers. As a result, many of these resources have been shut down, denying their utility to legitimate users.

E-mail worms or viruses may be spammed to set up an initial pool of infected machines, which then resend the virus to other machines in a spam-like manner. The infected machines can often be used as remote-controlled zombie computers, for more conventional spamming or DDoS attacks. Sometimes trojans are spammed to phish for bank account details, or to set up a pool of zombies without using a virus.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

e-Marketing is a type of marketing that can be defined as achieving objectives through the use of electronic communications technology such as Internet, e-mail, Ebooks, database, and mobile phone. It is a more general term than online marketing which is limited to the use of internet technology to attain marketing objectives.

Dave Chaffey, working from a relationship marketing perspective, has defined e-marketing as:

Applying Digital technologies which form online channels (Web, e-mail, databases, plus mobile/wireless & digital TV) to contribute to marketing activities aimed at achieving profitable acquisition and retention of customers (within a multi-channel buying process and customer lifecycle) through improving our customer knowledge (of their profiles, behaviour, value and loyalty drivers), then delivering integrated targeted communications and online services that match their individual needs. (Source: [1] with permission of the author)

Chaffey’s definition emphasises that:

1. It should not be the technology that drives e-marketing, but the business returns from gaining new customers and maintaining relationships with existing customers.
2. It also emphasises how e-marketing does not occur in isolation, but is most effective when it is integrated with other communications channels such as telemarketing, direct-mail, personal selling, advertising, publicity, sales promotion, and other promotional techniques.
3. Online channels should also be used to support the whole buying process from pre-sale to sale to post-sale and further development of customer relationships where this is appropriate.
4. It should be based on knowledge of customer needs developed by researching their characteristics, behaviour, what they value, and what keeps them loyal.
5. The web and e-mail communications should be personally tailored to individual buyers based on the information obtained in the research.

References

• Smith, P.R. and Chaffey, D. (2005) eMarketing eXcellence: at the heart of eBusiness. Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford, UK. 2nd edition. http://davechaffey.com/E-marketing

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

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Newsgroup spam predates e-mail spam, and targets Usenet newsgroups. Old Usenet convention defines spamming as excessive multiple posting, that is, the repeated posting of a message (or substantially similar messages). Since posting to newsgroups is nearly as easy as sending e-mails, newsgroups are a popular target of spammers. The Breidbart Index was developed to provide an objective measure of the “spamminess” of a multi-posted or cross-posted message on Usenet.

Spamming an internet forum in general, is when a user posts something which is off-topic or doesn’t have anything to do with the current subject. Also, a post that doesn’t contribute to the thread whatsoever is also considered spam in some cases. A third form of Forum Spamming is where a person repeatedly posts about a certain subject in a manner that is unwanted by (and possibly annoying to) the general population of the forum. Lastly there is also the case where a person posts messages solely for the purpose of increasing his or her ranking on the forum. In a broader sense, advertising on forums where it is not wanted is known as spamming and is generally seen as an annoyance.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

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The great majority of telemarketing presentations are legitimate calls from companies that offer valuable services. Unfortunately, telemarketing has also been negatively associated with various scams or frauds like multilevel marketing, pyramid schemes or with fraudulently overpriced products or services.

The prospective customers are identified and qualified by various means, including past purchase histories, previous requests for information, credit limit, competition entry forms or application forms. Names may also be purchased from another company’s customer database, or obtained from a telephone directory or some other public list or forum. The qualification process is intended to find those prospective customers most likely to purchase the product or service being sold or advertised. Charitable organizations, alumni associations and political parties often use telemarketing to solicit donations.

Market survey companies often use telemarketing techniques to survey prospective or past customers of a client business to assess market acceptance or satisfaction with a particular product, service, brand or company. Public opinion polls are conducted in a similar manner.

Telemarketing techniques can also be applied to other forms of electronic marketing using e-mail or fax messages.

Telemarketing is often criticized as being an unethical business practice as some companies make unsolicited calls, using high-pressure sales techniques. Such practices may be subject to regulatory or legislative controls related to consumer privacy and protection. In particular, telemarking in the U.S. is restricted at a federal level by the FCC’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 and the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule. Many professional associations of telemarketers do have codes of ethics and standards that member businesses follow to win public confidence.

Do Not Call Listings

Some jurisdictions have implemented “Do Not Call” listings, either through industry organizations or legislation, in which consumers can indicate that they do not wish to be called by telemarketers. Legislative versions often provide for heavy penalties for companies calling individuals on these listings. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has now implemented a National Do Not Call Registry in an attempt to reduce intrusive telemarketing on a national basis. Although challenged by telemarketing corporations and trade groups as a violation of commercial speech rights, the National Do Not Call Registry was upheld by the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on February 17, 2004.

Avoiding Telemarketing Calls

There are several methods that people use to avoid telemarketing calls. Using caller ID or a privacy manager can allow the targeted subscriber to identify the caller before the call is answered and make the decision not to answer. Answering machines and voicemail can also be used to screen calls, as telemarketers generally do not leave messages. A device called the Telezapper foils telemarketing calls by issuing a tone which causes the autodialer at the call center to log the number as out of service.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: How to Piss off a Telemarketer

A KMail folder full of spam e-mail messages collected over a few days.

Spamming is commonly defined as the sending of unsolicited bulk e-mail – that is, email that was not asked for (unsolicited) by multiple recipients (bulk). A further common definition of spam restricts it to unsolicited commercial e-mail, a definition that does not consider non-commercial solicitations such as political or religious pitches, even if unsolicited, as spam.

In the popular eye, the most common form of spam is that delivered in e-mail as a form of commercial advertising. However, over the short history of electronic media, people have spammed for many purposes other than the commercial, and in many media other than e-mail. Spammers have developed a variety of spamming techniques, which vary by media: e-mail spam, instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, and mobile phone messaging spam.

Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have effectively no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists. Because the barrier to entry is so low, the volume of unsolicited mail has produced other costs which are borne by the public (in terms of lost productivity and fraud) and by Internet service providers, which must add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in a number of jurisdictions.

Solutions to the spam problem

All manner of attempts have been made to curb unsolicited mass electronic communications. There are many solution categories in this constantly evolving field. Source-based blocking solutions prevent receipt of spam, while content filtering solutions identify spam after it’s been received. There are avoidance strategies, including disposable identities. Automated cancellation of netnews spam is ongoing. Contractual measures such as Internet Service Providers’ acceptable-use policies are also employed. Anti-spam laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 have also been introduced to regulate or increase the legal penalties for spamming. Various vigilante and retaliatory tactics are also employed. Newer strategies include various cost-based and e-mail authentication and sender reputation solutions. The best means however is to be vigilant as to whom you give your email address. Constant distribution of your email address is bound to result in spam in some way. The best frame of mind is to decide whether the website can be trusted with your email address.

Newsgroups

• news.admin.net-abuse.email
• others in news.admin.net-abuse.* hierarchy
• alt.spam

Links

• IETF views on spamming can be found in RFC 2635.
• Ursine:Spam – Spam article in The Jargon Wiki.
• DMOZ Open Directory
  • Webmaster Forums at the Open Directory Project
• CircleID: Addressing Spam
• Spam Blocker Crawler Free public service for scanning guestbooks on link spam and send abuse in the Google and spammer’s hoster.

Anti-spam organizations

• Anti Spam Research Group
• CAUCE
  • APCAUCE – CAUCE Asia Pacific
• The Spamhaus Project
• Fight Spam on the Internet!
• Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group
• OECD Antispam Toolkit

Anti-spam articles and publications

• Spam In Developing Countries – part of the OECD Antispam Toolkit
• AOL Postmaster Pages – What to do if AOL blocks you
• Outblaze Antispam Pages – Articles on spam filtering by the postmaster staff at Outblaze
• SpamKings Blog by Brian McWilliams
• SpamHelp Anti-Spam Articles
• Anti Spam Whitepapers and Software
• Anti-Spam Topics
• Antiphishing Crusade Daily News of phishing spam collected from around the net.
• Article by Andy Coote in SC Magazine June 2004
• California lawyer who sues spammers
• E-mail Address Harvesting: How Spammers Reap What You Sow by the Federal Trade Commission
• Email Battles Daily news about spam, security, privacy, spyware, phishing and viruses from the front lines of the e-mail wars.
• Getting Rid of Spam (summary)
• Library of E-mail Spam Reports and Articles
• Spam FAQs
• Spamfo.co.uk News on junk e-mail, scams, fraud, legal aspects and reviews of software and services.
• SpamNews.co.uk Delivering your daily slice of fresh Spam. All the spam news, all the time
• Suggestions on how to choose an e-mail address and how to disclose it with care
• The rules of spam, according to net.admin.net-abuse.email
• The War Against Spam — a collection of reading material on the subject
• Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report by the Center for Democracy & Technology
• UPI article about the economic effects of spam
• White paper from e-mail client developers
• Yahoo Domain Keys: Another Ineffective Spam Solution — shumans.com article, Dec 6, 2003
• Spam Techniques Research — do.homeunix.org paper and wiki, Jul 7, 2005
• A tool that deals with referer spam
• How to deny access to spam bots
• Why I Hate Spam by Bill Gates, The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2003.
• Artist turns mortgage loan and Viagra spam into art Vyuz.com

Humor

• Spamusement A collection of humorously drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines.
• The Incredible Spam Museum A search engine like site that collects and publish spam e-mails.
• Spamradio Turns spam e-mail into online music streams.
• Spam Eulogy A guy that lives in a world of spam.
• WhamBamSpam Website that wants you to spam it’s forums, essentially free advertising, and spam discussions.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Spam, Phishing, and Online Scams: A View from the Network-Level