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[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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