http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_19/b3832037.htm

MAY 12, 2003

NEWS: ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY

Slamming Spam

Enough already, says America – and regulators are cracking
down

Last fall, the server at Cincinnati's Bluespring Software Inc. crashed. E-mail
was down for three hours, and CEO Robert B. Daly missed three meetings because
his appointment files had vanished. Says Daly: "It makes you look
ridiculous."

The culprit? Spam -- the fast-rising flood of unsolicited junk mail that is
crashing computer systems and provoking howls of outrage from Internet users
coast to coast. Fully half of all e-mail is now spam, according to Brightmail
Inc., the San Francisco maker of spam-blocking software. Moreover, the junk
e-mail increasingly emanates from shady sources using false identities,
flogging everything from Viagra and other drugs to pornography and dubious
investments. Of 11 million spam messages collected by the Federal Trade
Commission, 44% came from phony addresses.

Little surprise, then, that the wave of unwanted e-mail has the business and
tech communities ratcheting up the war on spam. They've launched a
multi-pronged campaign: developing technological weapons against spam, taking
spammers to court, and lobbying for anti-spam legislation. On Apr. 28, Yahoo! (YHOO ), AOL (AOL ), and MSN (MSFT ) announced a joint
anti-spam offensive that will combine technological and legal measures. Two
days later, the FTC convened a brainstorming session in Washington to drum up
other anti-spam measures. Politicians, too, are getting into the act. On Apr.
29, Virginia enacted a law that calls for jail time for spammers who hide their
identity or send 10,000 copies of one e-mail message, and a flurry of anti-spam
bills have been introduced in Congress.

Why the big move now? Spam's impact on business and consumers cannot be
overstated. Dealing with all that junk e-mail is costing U.S. organizations $10
billion a year, according to Ferris Research in San Francisco. Internet service
providers are being inundated with complaints from subscribers about junk mail.
And retailers and others who rely on direct marketing worry that e-mail will be
sullied as a legitimate sales tool. "Long term, if the industry cannot
deal with spam," says Joe Barrett, AOL's senior vice-president for network
operation, "it's going to destroy e-mail."

Of course, this isn't the first attempt to solve the spam problem. Both AOL and
MSN launched upgrades of their Web portals in recent months, vowing that new
spam-blocking software would help stem the flood. But while AOL and MSN claim
they are blocking billions of spam a day, plenty more is still getting through.
As a result, says MSN Vice-President Brian Arbogast, "we're seeing an
amazing backlash from folks who realize that e-mail is no longer a dependable
means of communication because their messages are treated like spam."

The overarching goal of the AOL-MSN-Yahoo alliance is to make spam uneconomical
by using technology to make it tougher for senders of junk e-mail to gain
access to servers or reach individual in-boxes, and by filing more lawsuits
against the worst violators. "Everything we do will add to the cost of
spammers," Arbogast says.

Still, those efforts are likely to achieve only moderate success without
stronger federal laws regulating spam. One recently introduced bill proposed by
Senators Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) would make it a crime to
send unsolicited commercial e-mail with false or misleading headers or return
addresses. The bill, which goes before the Senate Commerce Committee this
month, also would allow state attorneys general and the FTC to impose stiff
criminal or civil fines.

The mounting crackdown has legitimate business spooked, especially direct
marketers who count on e-mail to push their products. "There's a lot of
money involved for us," says H. Robert Wientzen, president of the Direct
Marketing Assn. (DMA), whose members include everyone from the Home Shopping
Network to AT&T (T ).
That's why the DMA is teaming up with the FBI and Secret Service to go after
mailers responsible for the most egregious spam.

Clearly, spammers have attracted powerful enemies. No single front will put all
bogus junk mailers out of business. But the coordinated effort at least raises
hopes that the tide will be stemmed, if not reversed.

By Lorraine Woellert, with Stephen H. Wildstrom and Catherine Yang, in
Washington and with Robert Berner in Chicago

Copyright 2000-2003, by
The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.

Terms of Use   Privacy Policy