Spam (the computer kind) reaches an annoying anniversary
Computer users were first subjected to unsolicited e-mails 30 years ago
Spam, one of the most annoying features of the Internet age, is celebrating a milestone.
In the spring of 1978, someone sent a note advertising a new computer system to the addresses of about 600 people on Arpanet, the government-designed precursor to the Web.
The unsolicited message sparked an immediate outcry.
“This was a clear and flagrant abuse of the directory!” one user on the electronic list wrote.
This was the first of billions of spam e-mails sent over the next 30 years at a rate that has grown astronomically.
It’s estimated that 80 percent or more of all e-mail traffic is spam, produced by famed Buffalo Spammer Howard Carmack and others at very little cost to the sender.
“The reason they happen is it’s very cheap to send mass e-mails,” said Elias G. Eldayrie, chief information officer for the University at Buffalo. “The cost is not on the sending end. The cost is on the receiving end. They pass on the cost.”
Companies here and around the world spend billions of dollars on network filters and security systems to try to keep out spam while also letting legitimate e-mails through.
Despite these defensive barricades, millions of spam e-mails still flow into our inboxes.
The subject lines tout no-hassle college diplomas, cheap designer clothing , erectile dysfunction treatments and, of course, access to the fortunes of deceased Nigerian millionaires.
More sinister spam e-mails carry viruses that can hijack a computer server or “phish” for financial account information from gullible recipients.
“There are some things that sneak through, and it forces IT [information technology] to react to the problem,” said Mark Young, director of information technology for the Phillips Lytle law firm.
Spam has come a long way since May 1978, when computer salesman Gary Thuerk was trying to find a way to reach potential customers on the West Coast, according to a history compiled by Brad Templeton, a Toronto native and chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
A directory helpfully listed the electronic mail addresses of all Arpanet users, so Thuerk was able to send his ad to hundreds of them at once.
Reaction was swift and largely negative. But Digital Equipment Corp. sold more than 20 of its new computer systems, at about $1 million each, thanks to the note, according to an account in the New Yorker magazine.
Experts say this is why spam is so widespread: It works.
Some people reply to these e-mailed come-ons, and all it takes is a small response rate for spammers to make a profit.
That’s because, after the initial expense of paying for a computer and a Web connection to get started with the first batch of spam, there’s little additional cost to send out another 5,000, 500,000 or 50 million e-mails.
“There was no reason not to try it if you didn’t have any ethical qualms,” Templeton said. “I’ve said P. T. Barnum was wrong: There’s a sucker spammed every second.”
‘Monty Python’ link
A flood of unwanted commercial e-mail first took on the name “spam” in the mid-1990s.
That label stems from a “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” skit set in a restaurant where every item on the menu contains Hormel’s famous spiced ham and where Vikings sing a song repeating the word “spam” over and over.
Spam makes up about 80 percent of all e-mail traffic, according to Richi Jennings, a lead analyst with Ferris Research.
The total number of spam e-mails sent worldwide rose from 18 trillion in 2006 to 30 trillion in 2007 and is expected to hit 40 trillion messages this year, Jennings said.
That’s about 6,000 spam e-mails for every one of the 6.7 billion people on the planet.
There’s usually a big boost at the start of the college academic year, but spam often is tied to Christmas, tax season and other events on the calendar.
Fighting spam will cost companies in the United States alone $42 billion this year, Ferris Research reports.
“[Prospective clients] are tired of, ‘I get 100 messages in my inbox, and two of them are legitimate.’ I hear that all the time,” said Russell Hulsing Jr., chief operating officer of Time Position, a Buffalo company that provides IT and hosting services.
Companies use an intricate network of filters to keep out spam, and most is blocked before it enters users’ inboxes, local IT officials said.
At UB, the campus’ Internet network receives 3.5 million incoming e-mails each day, and about 80 percent are spam, said Eldayrie, the university’s chief information officer.
The filter determines if an e-mail is spam based on the terms used in the message, its length and where the message came from, said Saira Hasnain, UB’s director of enterprise infrastructure services.
There’s a cat-and-mouse aspect to spamming, with spammers altering the spelling of certain words — V1agra, anyone? — before the filters got smarter.
Later, some spammers switched to making their point through images, which can be difficult to judge and can lead to false positive readings.
“Phishing” spam, such as the e-mails that purport to come from the IRS, your bank or PayPal, seek personal financial information and appear deceptively official.
More sinister spammers send out innocuous-looking e-mails with links or attachments that contain viruses or “malware” — short for “malicious software” — that can hijack a computer without the user’s knowledge.
“For those that are unprepared, it can cause huge issues on your internal” network, said Matt Speare, a senior vice president and manager of technology infrastructure for M&T Bank.
Buffalo’s spam king
One of the most clever — and notorious — spammers was Howard Carmack, a Buffalo resident whose 2003 arrest and subsequent trial on charges of illegal spamming drew national attention.
Carmack, the first person convicted of illegal spamming in New York State, was accused of sending 850 million junk e-mails through EarthLink, the Internet service provider, using a dialup Web connection.
He used stolen credit card numbers to sign up for more than 300 e-mail accounts, allowing him to move around if EarthLink shut one down, court papers stated.
Carmack received a 2z-to-seven-year prison sentence, though his convictions on some counts were overturned on appeal.
Wayne C. Felle, Carmack’s attorney during the trial, said prosecutors made the case a priority at the behest of then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
Carmack didn’t believe he had done anything wrong and took pride in his ability to frustrate EarthLink, Felle said.
“I don’t think he thought of this as a crime,” Felle said. “He certainly thought the sentence — going to jail— was way overboard.”
Carmack was taken out of the spam business, but will we ever be free from unwanted e-mails?
In 2004, Bill Gates predicted that spam would be eliminated within two years.
That didn’t happen, and laws aimed at ending spam — such as the 2003 federal CAN-SPAM Act — haven’t been entirely successful, IT experts said.
“The people who were the big culprits have just moved offshore, where they’re outside the reach of the law,” Hulsing said.
