Can of Spam
March 13th, 2007 by mikeI don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a tremendous increase in the amount of spam that I’ve been receiving lately. For years I’ve employed a system of identifying the sources of my spam, but it has not been as successful as I would have hoped. I own quite a few domain names, and I’ve had one in particular for a very long time. Every time I sign up for any sort of online account that requires an email address, I would use that site’s url @ my domain as the address. What this allowed me to do, at the very least, was to identify those companies that sold my email address to people who spammed me later on. One of the biggest problems with this was that it meant that I had to set up a catch-all for my domain, pointing to my main account.
I was able to block specific addresses which were easily identified as spam-only accounts (accounts such as bob@, juliet@, and diane@), but there were many many addresses that received email that differed from each other day by day. For a while (a long while) I received little to no spam from the sites that I signed up for. Recently though, this has changed drastically. I’ve been receiving tons of spam to addresses such as tdwaterhouse@, musiciansfreind@, and vmware@. And it’s all the same stock-related blurry image spam.
So, what do I believe: That TD Waterhouse, VMware, and Musician’s Friend sold my email address to spammers to make a few bucks? Or that their servers have been compromised and my email address (and possibly _shiver_ my bank and credit card information) was stolen?
What are we to do about this vastly expanding problem? A few years ago Dvorak and his like predicted that spam would be the end of email. While that hasn’t actually happened yet, its getting closer.
Any thoughts ?
Posted in Thoughts |
March 15th, 2007 at 3:02 am
The reputable companies that we do business with on a daily basis would seemingly suffer too harsh a consequence if they were found to be directly involved with offering or selling customer information to spammers. I’m convinced however that there are a plethora of third party service providers/business partners that are so-called reputable but in fact are not. They are once removed from our credit card issuers and banks and subscription providers and thus the big name business keep their hands clean. They can make profits from their partner deals that are greater because of the partners ability to sell our information. If the partner is held accountable the liability stops there, it never travels uphill.
Information is power and money. To answer the question; “So, what do I believe: That TD Waterhouse, VMware, and Musician’s Friend sold my email address to spammers to make a few bucks?â€, yes and no. Morally speaking yes, legally speaking probably not. This begs the question; how do we stop it?
Seems to me the only solution is to somehow make spam unprofitable. With the number of hopelessly ignorant people in the world and the increasing number of them owning computers, we may not stand a chance. Ultimately, I fear that the proposal for a solution will come in the form of some government regulation motivated by a grab for power that results in just another forfeiture of our rights.
I have heard some interesting proposals for technology based solutions. In theory these can work. But understand the audience. These solutions require some effort on the part of administrators and end users. Users that think AOL is the internet and cant tell the difference between their browser and the desktop are not capable of participating. Most admins are so bogged down by oppressive upper-management and foolish users, that in the end they just don’t have the energy or time to devote to it.
The spam volume on my end is just overwhelming. My users in the office on average are receiving a combined >1500 spams per day. We deal with it the best we can technology wise. Its a crime.