Big Three U.S. Dotcoms Wage War on Spam

Office workers begin their days by checking their e-mail.

Words fill up mailboxes: “cheap loans”, “quick money offer”, “free lottery offer for foreign cruise”, “sale of over-the-counter Viagra”, “steamy video files”, etc. Add titles like “Inquiry for payment”, “What`s happening in Iraq”, and the list goes on forever.

The U.S. Fair Trade Commission (FTC), along with dotcoms, have embarked on a war against spam-mail, which account for over half of all e-mail transactions. The war, this time though, seems not as easy to win as is combating cockroaches.

An anti-spam software developer, Brightmail Co. estimated that 45% out of the total e-mail circulation in March, this year was spam. The number accounted for a meager 8 percent as of September, 2001. AOL, an Internet Service Provider, filters 780 million spam emails everyday. Jupiter Research forecasts that as many as 319 billion unsolicited emails will be delivered this year to online users in the U.S. alone.

This online nuisance will cost the U.S. 10 billion dollars annually, considering time and money spent on erasing spam, slowdown of the net speed, and loss of productivity.

The problem is that the cost will not be borne by the senders. Five dollars can buy a CD that contains 1 million e-mail addresses. Free downloading is available for software to send mass mail to groups. One read out of the distributed 100,000 spam emails would pay off.

ISPs including AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo announced their joint commitment on April 28 to fight spam. They are planning to adopt new technologies, which forbid irrelevant referencing and which detect unsolicited emails. The FTC also plans to open a workshop today to discuss legal and regulatory measures against spammers.

Nevertheless, the task ahead will not be an easy one as spammers have every scheme in the book not to mention the most cutting-edge technology. Using “robot programs”, spammers can rake in e-mail addresses online and upgrade them on a regular basis. This smart software can even tell whether a receiver has read the mail.

Computer users may put those addresses on a blacklist and believe they are relieved from vexation, but spammers can alternate their IDs with dozens of different ones.

Twenty-eight states in the U.S. have put into place regulatory laws on spam. If a spammer sends an unsolicited advertisement in disguise, he can be penalized. The problem, however, is that close watch is nearly impossible and that rigid enforcement is challenged in the face of strong opposition from online marketers every day.

Seung-Jin Kim sarafina@donga.com