SPAM ON THE INTERNET:ABSTRACTINTRODUCTION:PART ONE: THE PROGRESS OF SPAMPART TWO: DEFINING THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF UNSOLICITED BULK E-MAILPART THREE: COMBATING SPAMBLOCK LISTINGPROTOCOL CHANGEECONOMIC SOLUTIONSCOMPUTATIONAL SOLUTIONSE-MAIL ALIASINGSENDER WARRANTED E-MAILCOLLABORATIVE FILTERINGRULE-BASED SOLUTIONSSTATISTICAL SOLUTIONSLEGISLATIVE SOLUTIONSCONCLUSIONS: IS SPAM HERE TO STAY?ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSREFERENCESAPPENDIX A: CLASSIFYING SPAMJISC Techwatch Paper. Spam on the Internet SPAM ON THE INTERNET: Is it here to stay or can it be eradicated? Sara de Freitas and Mark Levene de Freitas and Levene Page: 1JISC Techwatch Paper. Spam on the Internet SPAM ON THE INTERNET:.................................................... 1 ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. 3 INTRODUCTION: ..................................................................................................................... 3 PART ONE: THE PROGRESS OF SPAM ...................................................................................... 4 PART TWO: DEFINING THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF UNSOLICITED BULK E-MAIL ...................... 7 PART THREE: COMBATING SPAM ........................................................................................... 7 CONCLUSIONS: IS SPAM HERE TO STAY?.............................................................................. 16 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................................................... 17 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 17 APPENDIX A: CLASSIFYING SPAM ........................................................................................ 21 de Freitas and Levene Page: 2JISC Techwatch Paper. Spam on the Internet ABSTRACT This report outlines the growing problem of spam (unsolicited bulk e-mail), which has become a pervasive problem for Internet activity and has important implications for further and higher education institutions. The report provides a brief history of the development of spam, an explanation of how to define the different types of spam and an overview of technological and social ways of combating spam. The report provides a starting point for understanding the scale of the problem and begins a consideration of what further and higher education institutions can do to readdress the pervasive problem of unsolicited bulk e-mail. INTRODUCTION: At a recent address to the World Economic Forum, Microsoft’s Bill Gates promised that ‘spam will soon be a thing of the past’ (Weber, 2004). Although others do not share Bill Gates’s optimism (Arthur, 2004), his hopes to completely eradicate all spam by 2006 reflect a growing impatience with the problem of escalating amounts of unsolicited bulk e-mail. Unsolicited bulk e-mail – or spam as it is popularly called – currently accounts for 63 per cent of all received e-mail in March 2004 (Brightmail, 2004; Salem, 2004). Of the 70 million e-mails that Brightmail filtered in September 2003 alone 54 per cent was unsolicited mail and that percentage is increasing year on year. In addition, Shinya Akamine, chief executive of Postini Inc., a US spam-filtering company, told a recent US Congress hearing that she believes spam has grown from 78 per cent to 83 per cent of all e-mail traffic this year (Krim, 2004). But although Bill Gates’s plan to use a combination of different ways of filtering e-mail may lead to a significant reduction of spam in the short term, many are concerned that spam will never be completely eradicated (Hypönnen, 2004; Linford, 2004). Spam has increasingly become a problem for all sectors of industry and education since the development of the World Wide Web and the increased use of e-mail for business and education (Salem, 2004). A series of attempts, both technological and non-technological, have been made to try to combat the increasing problems of congested mailboxes and to counter the heavy weight of unwanted e-mail traffic, which will have a strong effect upon the overall performance of the Internet. This has obvious implications for further and higher education in terms of the priority of maintaining institution-wide systems that are being used to support administrative tasks, and are increasingly being used for the delivery of learning materials and to support online communities of learners (de Freitas and Roberts, 2004). In order to more fully consider the possible solutions to the spam problem, this paper will provide: a brief overview of the development of spam from the earliest direct marketing of Charles Ponzi to the modern day spammers, and a consideration of the different types and examples of spam. We will also consider the scale of the problem de Freitas and Levene Page: 3JISC Techwatch Paper. Spam on the Internet and provide a technological review of the current methods being used to filter, track and block spam. We will also consider some current and future non-technological solutions including legislation, financial penalties and collaborative systems. We will conclude with some observations about the possible future of spam. While the authors note a paucity of academic literature, with a particular need for literature on spamming written from social scientific perspectives, the report therefore draws upon interviews with noted experts in the field as well as sourcing from a wide range of technical and journalistic reports and articles. Notably there is an increasing issue of spam affecting instant messaging and texting services delivered to mobile devices (Syntegra, 2003). This paper primarily concerns the use of e-mail for spamming due to the large scale of the problem. PART ONE: THE PROGRESS OF SPAM This section will provide a brief overview of spam from the earliest direct marketing in 1919 until today when the increasing use of spam is creating potential problems that may even lead to a collapse of the e-mail system (Hypönnen, 2004). In 1919, Charles Ponzi developed the direct marketing pyramid scheme allowing investors to ‘double their money in 90 days’, a claim that resulted in mass investment into the scheme, making it an overnight success. Ponzi had promised money back fast but these promises turned out to be unfounded - and within four months many people had lost a lot of
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