By David Hurst
SPAM is the scourge of the Internet, and for those that don’t know, we’re talking about unsolicited emails here not meat in a can. Anyone who has held an email account for any length of time and is active on the Internet will no doubt be batting off solicitations to buy Viagra, extend one’s manhood, or help deposed African dictators launder their money. Most of us simply delete these messages as soon as they arrive, which begs the question, why do the spammers do it? What is their rate of return?
Well, it would seem that the rate of return is a staggering 1 in 1,000,000! This doesn’t deter the spammers though, they just send more emails!
So, how can they afford to send out this large volume of messages? Simple answer: they can’t. Spammers don’t buy their own servers - they would be blacklisted and blocked within minutes - instead they steal bandwidth from unsuspecting ISPs and Internet users. This could be in the form of a website email form that can be hijacked and manipulated, it could be a direct hacking attack on a server, or it can be through computer viruses that infect home PCs and allow them to be controlled by the spammers for sending their messages.
And because they are stealing their bandwidth, there is a cost. A recent research study in the US concluded that spam costs US business over $20 billion per year!
It may come as no surprise then to know that around 45% of all emails are spam!
And how about this for shocking? A new study has revealed that creating and managing spam uses enough energy each year to power more than 2.4 million homes!
You’d be justified in asking why we can’t stop this from happening, and the answer is that we could. We could re-write the email protocols to work more like instant messaging, where you have to approve someone to be on your contact list before they can send you messages. This new protocol could easily be phased in over a number of years, with software systems supporting both protocols in the interim period. The problem is the cost involved and the need for people to work together toward a harmonious solution. Such scenarios rarely occur, so it looks like we will be stuck dealing with these messages for some time yet.
