Spam threatens to choke internet

By ALISON HORWOOD

Spam. Not a rich and meaty product, the spam we are talking about is the endless stream of junk email that clutters in-boxes every day.

It's the mail you didn't ask for, and it comes from people you don't know, offering Nigerian get-rich schemes, female Viagra cream, and Asian babes doing unnatural acts.

The scourge of every business, it is endemic and it is threatening to choke the internet.

The cost of spam worldwide runs into the billions as businesses and internet service providers fine-tune their systems to block it, and workers take time out from a busy day to dump it.

Best estimates suggest the volume has increased between five and ten-fold in the last year.

Brightmail, a UK company that specialises in blocking spam, estimates the unwanted irritants make up between 15 and 30 per cent of all e-mail handled by internet service providers (ISPs).

In New Zealand, two of the bigger players among the country's 80-odd ISPs - Telstra Clear (Clearnet and Paradise) and Xtra - say spam makes up at least 10 per cent of their incoming mail.

While the cost worldwide is impossible to quantify, a British MessageLabs survey of 200 companies found the average worker took 10 minutes a day to clear spam.

That's £470 ($1534) a year in lost time for someone on a salary of £25,000 ($81,618) - so for Britain alone, the bill runs into the billions.

The European Commission estimates that spam costs European consumers US$8.6 billion ($19.5 billion) a year.

New Zealand internet commentator and editor of Aardvark Bruce Simpson says spam has been a problem here for four or five years, with volumes increasing markedly in the past year.

"A number of people have said that they are now receiving more than twice the level of spam they got just a year ago," he says.

The increase may come down to economics and software. The cost of sending a million messages is marginally more than sending 10.

The acquisition of e-mail addresses is relatively easy with the use of software robots that trawl the web looking for addresses.

For the spammer, although the response rate may be low - figures of 2 to 3 per cent have been suggested - big money can be made if enough mail is sent.

Internet Society executive director Sue Leader says the society is "well aware of the issue" and plans to address it at a strategic planning meeting.

"I think everyone is aware of the nuisance value and one thing that has been quite obvious is the increase in the last couple of months, especially from Asia," she says.

She cleared her in-box recently and found that 150 of 220 new pieces of mail were spam.

So what's the answer?

Legislation looks like a weak option. The European Commission is considering laws that would block companies in the EU from sending e-mails without having specific permission from the potential recipients.

The State of Washington has had laws against unwanted e-mails for some years. Despite successful lawsuits, the flow has not been stemmed.

Laws are often ineffective because spammers send their mail via servers in the Far East and Asia - which can often be hijacked - and so remain outside their home countries' legislation.

Nothing is planned by our own Government. Simpson suggests the only way to stamp out spam would be to introduce global cyberspace legislation.

Separate legislation against spamming in New Zealand would fail because almost all the mail arrives from countries over which we have no jurisdiction.

Simpson says many messages arriving here are US-based, but are sent via insecure computers in countries such as Korea, Taiwan, China or the former Soviet states.

The cost to New Zealand is manifold.

There is the wasted bandwidth the spam consumes - some users pay for each megabyte of data received over a certain level.

There is the wasted time spent wading through a mailbox. There is the extra computer and disk capacity that ISPs install to cope with the traffic.

Not only is spam a waste of time and money, says Simpson, but almost everyone pays for it - except the spammer.

ISPs pass on the extra costs of having to deliver it to users' mailboxes and users have to cover the cost of time wasted deleting it.

Xtra spokesman Matt Bostwick describes spam as a "scourge" that "chews up system resources", so legitimate mail is delayed while the spam is processed.

Xtra has a dedicated security team of five to filter spam, but some does get through.

Telstra Clear spokesman Ralph Little says that while it is difficult to put a figure on the cost to the company, it uses valuable resources including a round-the-clock team.

The team looks for features typical of spam such as large quantities of mail coming from a particular address.

Customers are encouraged to implement their own steps to cut down spam, such as using filters.