Spam: The unstoppable Internet menace

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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 () farber net.

Don't send any advertisements.


Dimitri Vassilaros can be reached at dvassilaros () tribweb com or (412) 380-5637. 

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