Tom Whitehurst

Terror didn't halt intrepid spam senders

One part of everyday modern workplace life that all but disappeared for a few hours Tuesday was junk e-mail, a.k.a. spam.
   But even the terrorism that shocked the world and will dwarf Pearl Harbor in scale by the time all the dead are counted couldn't stop this one from busting through at 1:40 p.m.:
   "These girls are barely legal!"
   What a relief to know that in this time of anguish and peril, with thousands of U.S. civilians murdered before an international television audience by an unknown foe, the solicitation superhighway was not only alive and well, but downright frisky.
   Before the day was out, in addition to the invitations to see nekkid cheerleaders and such, I had received the usual offers to refinance my mortgage, become debt free, turbo-charge my Web site, earn $2,000 a week stuffing envelopes and earn $1 million a year while working at home on my personal computer for just a few hours a week. (To their credit, the breast enlargement folks left me alone Tuesday.)
   You'd think that the CEOs of Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone would've figured out by now that making millions sitting at home beats going to congressional hearings and court all the time.
   Also, aside from the fact that those barely legal girls truly love me, why did they send me the same message four times in one day, from four apparently different addresses?
   Cary Fitch, manager of Affordable Internet, a local service provider, explained how this happens:
   "You have a Web site. Your e-mail address is listed on your Web site. It's very easy to just scan Web sites automatically, parse through the code and an e-mail address is very obvious.
   "You've got a public e-mail address. You're broadcasting it. A lot of people don't, but if they're on any kind of public mailing list, where they contribute to some kind of public forum, it's possible to harvest their address off those.
   "Not to mention, of course, some commercial transactions. You write in and ask about something and - I won't say it's less than ethical, it's another income source for a lot of people - they sell their lists of e-mail addresses.
   "And there are other places that say your address is private but it isn't. They have sold it."
   Spam merchants falsify the information in the headers of their e-mailings, obscuring their addresses, the relays along the Internet, and even the receiver's address.
   Covering their tracks
   "The people who do spamming set up machines that falsify that information, and they rotate that information perpetually so we can't say that everything coming from Spam-R-Us is you, because it's coming from many addresses apparently. It's like a return address on an envelope - you can write any return address you want on the letter."
   Spam merchants can send one e-mail to an open relay - a system that accepts e-mails indiscriminately - and spew thousands of copies from the open relay.
   So, no matter how much you may like barely legal girls, don't click the link to see what they look like unless you really like spam, Fitch says. (Besides, I'm the one they want, or so it says in the e-mails they send me.)
   "People don't realize that if they click on it, it sends a message back and confirms that this is a good address."
   Also, if it says "Click here if you want to be removed from this list," don't.
   "They just spammed you to begin with," Fitch says, "and clicking the unsubscribe button is like sending back a valid receipt. If it's GM or Pizza Hut, it's OK to click. But if it's porno or get-out-of-debt, you've just confirmed. They've put you on the good e-mail list."
   Virtually free
   Spam is "virtually free for the sender," Fitch says, no pun intended. Traditional junk mail at least has postage costs and government regulations.
   "You've mailed five letters and you've spent a dollar," Fitch says. "With e-mails you can send millions over a period of a week and spend next to nothing. The cost is negligible, so they just keep pounding away at it."
   As for those promises of earning a million a year sitting at home, or $2,000 a week stuffing envelopes, Fitch says they're no different from classified ads that say "send money for instructions."
   "Some way they're planning to get your money," he says, "or they're planning to get your credit card number."
   Speaking of barely legal.
  
  

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