Spam

Questions

1. What is Spam?
2. When is Spam Spam?
3. Where does the term ‘Spam’ come from?
4. Why do people send Spam?
5. How can I tell who the Spam is from?
6. How do ‘spammers’ get my address?
7. What are DNS blacklists?

1. What is Spam?

The term Spam refers to unsolicited, unwanted, inappropriate bulk email, Usenet postings and MUD/IRC monologs. For the purposes of this discussion, we will use the term Spam primarily in reference to email, which is what it is generally understood to mean when used in connection with the Internet. Spam is often referred to as Unsolicited Bulk Mail (UBM), Excessive Multi-Posting (EMP), Unsolicited Commercial email (UCE), spam mail, bulk email or just junk mail.

2. When is Spam spam?

Exactly where to draw the line between Spam and legitimate email or spam free bulk email is not as obvious as it may seem. To some, any and all email that does not come from an approved source is Spam. According to Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) www.mail-abuse.org:

An electronic message is “spam” IF: (1) the recipient’s personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (2) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent; AND (3) the transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to give a disproportionate benefit to the sender.

MAPS’ definition of Spam goes on to say that whether the email is relevant, or whether the benefit to the sender is disproportionate is up to the recipient and not open to discussion. If this is the case, then Spam isn’t Spam until the recipient decides it is. However, point (2) above really only makes sense when interpreted in the context of bulk email sent to subscribers. As often as not, the first email you ever send to someone has not been “authorised” since you have never exchanged emails. Further, MAPS goes to considerable length to define “strong terms and conditions prohibiting [email users] from engaging in abusive email practices”. These terms and conditions deal exclusively with bulk email sent to lists of addressees. In other words, they want their users to send spam free bulk email. This underlines the generally accepted principle that for Spam to really be Spam, it has to be bulk email. This definition is reinforced by Henry Neeman’s “Why Spam is Bad” – a thoroughly enlightening read. Mr Neeman explains to a particularly dense group of spammers, entirely in single syllable words that “Spam is the same thing lots and lots of times.”

To learn more about how to stop spam mail and block junk email with a junk email filter or anti spam program, read on.

3. Where does the term “Spam” come from?

The prevailing theory is that the term refers to a classic skit by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In the skit a couple in a restaurant tries in vain to order something that does not have SPAM in it. As the waitress lists endless dishes, all of them containing increasing amounts of SPAM, a group of Vikings in the corner begin to sing “spam, spam, spam, spam.” until all useful information is drowned out. But where did the connection between unwanted SPAM and unwanted Spam come from?

It did not start with email. The term has it roots, in relation to the Internet, in the late 1980s or early 1990s in Multi-User Dungeons (MUD) and Multi-User Shared Hallucinations (MUSH). MUDs and MUSHes are online, real-time, interactive, text-based virtual environments. According to one source, a MUSH user programmed a macro key to type “spam spam spam.” in a MUSH until his connection was terminated by a SysAdmin. He was subsequently referred to as “the !*%@ who spammed us” by other members. From MUDs and MUSHes the term Spam began to be used to describe Excessive Multi-Posting (EMP) on Usenet groups. Usenet “news” groups are forums where “authors” can “publish articles” to be read by other users and subsequently discussed. Not much of what gets “published” could ever be considered “news” by any reasonable standard of measure, but the original term is still used today. Under normal circumstances a user would post a message to one or to a small number of relevant newsgroups, asking questions or airing opinions. By using software to automate the process of posting, it became possible to post the same message to thousands of newsgroups ensuring a readership in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.

The very first Spam email was sent on 1 May 1978 by a Digital Equipment Corp. sales rep advertising a computer equipment demonstration. An attempt was made to send this email to all of the Arpanet users on the west coast of the US. The reaction on the part of the recipients was not unlike what you may expect today. Remember that Arpanet was a military project and commercial use was not acceptable. At the time, there was no such thing as an email Spam filter to stop Spam mail because there was no Spam. In April 1994, the Phoenix law firm, Canter and Siegel, advertised their services by posting a message to several thousand newsgroups. This was probably the first automated large scale commercial use of Spam, and was the incident that popularised the term, which up until then had been exclusively part of the arcane vocabulary of Multi-User Dungeons.

4. Why do people send spam?

Spam is the electronic equivalent of junk mail. People send Spam in order to sell products and services or to promote an email scam. Some Spam is purely ideological, sent by purveyors of thought. The bulk of Spam is intended, however, to draw traffic to web sites or to sell sex and money making schemes. Unlike junk mail in your physical mailbox, Spam does not abait if it is unsuccessful. When marketing departments send junk mail at considerable expense, without success, they generally cease, or try a different sales pitch. Spam on the other hand can be entirely unsuccessful, but the large number of wannabe spammers waiting in the wings ensures that we will continue to receive lots of it.

Spammers go to considerable effort to thwart recipients’ attempts to stop spam email. They specifically design their emails to bypass your email spam filter.

5. How can I tell who the spam is from?

Normally you cannot. Spam control can become very sophisticated. More experienced users can look at the email “headers” to find the origin of the message but frequently the spammer will set up a one-time email account purely to initiate the spam email shot. When the email shot is finished, the account is closed. At other times, the spammer will forge headers making it difficult or impossible to trace the origin of the Spam, so finding the original sender will very often prove fruitless. Spam protection and junk email prevention require more subtle measures than just finding the culprit.

6. How do spammers get my email address?

Through many means. Some companies you may have had dealings with sell their mailing lists to third parties, spammers included. Spammers also use “robots” to scour the Internet and harvest any email addresses that they find. If you post to newsgroups you are also at risk of spammers picking up your email address and sending you junk email. To get adequate spam protection and get rid of Spam, you really need more than one email address. This is an essential element of proper Spam control.

7. What are DNS blacklists?

DNS blacklists are lists of domains that are known to originate Spam. Many anti-spam software programs use these lists to control Spam by refusing any email that originates from one of these domains. DNS blacklists are usually maintained by anti-spam organizations or by individuals with an intense dislike for Spam. The difficulty with DNS blacklists is the need for objectivity in deciding when to blacklist a domain. In order to know that a domain is producing Spam, the offence must be reported. Reporting Spam without any anti-abuse mechanism in place, however, leaves nothing to stop people from getting servers added to a DNS blacklist out of malice. The obvious solution would be to require a minimum number of reported incidents before blacklisting a server. This proves equally unsatisfactory however as a measure to stop Spam mail. Anyone who manages large mailing lists knows that a small percentage of people who subscribe subsequently accuse the sender of spamming them when they receive their email. Naturally, a company that sends out millions of legitimate commercial emails will receive more accusations of Spam than one that sends out a smaller amount of spam free bulk email.