[IP] Spam: The unstoppable Internet menace
Spam: The unstoppable Internet menace
By Dimitri Vassilaros
TRIBUNE-REVIEW (Pittsburgh)
Thursday, October 30, 2003
My Tuesday started with an offer from a cheating housewife for a discreet
encounter.
Most Tuesdays are like that. Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays,
Sundays and Mondays, too.
The unsolicited solicitations for clandestine carnal cavorting on the
Internet, and offers for other services or products on the
way-too-much-information superhighway, sometimes come with free 24-hour
trials.
My anonymous admirers must really like me. They ask only for my credit card
number and the expiration date.
Reading e-mail used to be fun.
Back in the good old days -- two or three years ago -- most of the messages
in my electronic mailbox were from friends or readers. I enjoyed
communicating with them as we sent our thoughts back and forth. Now, the
day starts with wading through what seems like hundreds of unsolicited
messages -- spam -- for everything I neither need nor want.
I can have a free two-month supply of a wonder drug-like product that will
increase my emotional stability by 67 percent. Another claims to reverse
the aging process while burning fat without diet or exercise. If I took
both, maybe I would be mistaken for Dick Clark.
Prescription drugs of almost any kind from an online pharmacy that's open
24/7? No problem.
You'll be spared any more references to the apparently infinite variety of
taboo sites for adults at which you can browse endlessly if you have good
credit and no shame. You can find the addresses in my delete file.
Surely, one of the brilliant minds at Carnegie Mellon University has
figured out a way to stop the spam madness. Maybe he will share the secret
with me.
"I get 140 in a one-hour period," said David J. Farber, professor of
computer science and public policy at CMU. The most he received in one day
was 2,000. I thought I had spam problems.
"The way you avoid spam is don't receive or send anything," he said. This
is not the answer I want to hear.
Because much of the spam originates offshore, and it is perfectly legal,
there is very little you can do to stop it, Farber said. "I guess you could
send a battleship over."
Works for me.
"I consider the most obnoxious to be spam selling software to prevent
spam," he said. One of the big problems with spam is that it works, Farber
said. "They must get a return. It does not make any sense otherwise. I have
no proof, but it's my assumption that it works."
Because there is no end in sight, I might go online for industrial strength
antidepressants.
Even with a really good spam filter, there is not much even someone such as
Farber can do. "At least e-mail spam does not cut down too many trees," he
said. Farber gets bags and bags of junk mail. People have gotten used to
throwing it away. "I prefer baskets full of e-mail and trees not come down."
Some consolation, that.
Farber will give a talk on spam Nov. 20 at CMU. For more details, e-mail
him at dave+talk@xxxxxxxxxxx
Don't send any advertisements.
Dimitri Vassilaros can be reached at dvassilaros@xxxxxxxxxxx or (412) 380-5637.
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