Mountain of spam keeps on growing

If we are what we spam, then netizens are a sorry bunch. My annual sifting of spam in search of the true nature of internet users shows an alarming increase in male sexual insecurity and their obsession with pornography.

This cyber forensic anthropological analysis of 100 spams, not counting repeats, received early this year shows net users:

* Want to enlarge their ... er, assets.

Nine offers (four more than last year), in various forms, to "add up to five inches to your private part" or get "THE FIRST ALL-IN-ONE Male Performance Enhancer AND Penis Enlargement". Often they contained "the trademarked Swedish ingredient cernitin", some sounded painful, and many were Viagra or herbal alternatives.

* Are unrepentant porn addicts.

Fifteen (nine more than last year) invitations to view naked women, see various sexual practices and be generally depraved.

* Are overweight, often unwell and want immortality.

Eight offers to help lose weight, quit smoking and live longer. Best wonder drug: "Coral Calcium Supreme produces a chemical and electrolyte balance within the body so that your body cures itself."

* Are very short of money and always looking for ways to make it quickly.

Seven get-rich-quick offers: "A One Time Investment Of $25 Plus This Simple Technology Could Make You Financially Secure For Life!" Plus four for refinancing and cheap loans, and four best stock picks. Best scheme: "180 days to $6 Million monthly ... that's right, MONTHLY!!!".

* Like to buy, often strange things.

Fifteen offers including domain names, inkjet cartridges, memory, George Bush memorial bills, e-books, country visas, search engine rankings, card cutters, cellphones, DVD copying software and antivirus software. Strangest offer: "TWO 100 ton and 140 ton, MARINE SELF PROPELLED FLOATING CRANES" in the Ukraine.

* Are spammers in denial.

Six promises to provide the email addresses of the entire planet: "Collect 100,000 to 500,000 new email addresses every month." Most pretended they were offering genuine direct email services: "Emails with 'abuse, complaint, spam, root, unsolicited', will be filtered out for customers." Yeah, right.

But of course most netizens are not like this at all. What we're all suffering from is a terrible plague forced upon us by a few - although you can see how a cyber forensic anthropologist examining one's inbox might get the wrong idea.

In the physical world, pornography, sexual potency products, get-rich-quick schemes, weird health fads and the like are available if you want them but are largely confined to the fringe.

What's particularly annoying about this stuff is that the fringe dwellers have found a way to invade our daily lives - in my case mainly at work, because so far not many of them have found my home address.

It's even more annoying that most spam is not about the products or services on offer, but about feeding spammers email databases.

As Wired News found this month in a test reply to 75 junk messages, 56 per cent never responded. That's 42 emails that joined the neverending spam cycle by being sold on to other spammers. Which is why the first rule of fighting spam is to never, ever, respond to it.

Incidentally, Wired News did find that 17 per cent of the replies were legitimate offers - even though most of the sellers weren't aware the recipient hadn't requested their sales pitch.

It also found 16 per cent of the messages were blatant scams and that only the porn offers delivered what they promised - although if you visit the sites advertised, many will try to put "spyware" on your computer and swamp your inbox with XXX-rated spam "that would singe the retinas of all but the most jaded viewer".

So what's being done to stop this scourge of the net? Not much, and it's only getting worse, according to research firm IDC, which says spam volume jumped 28 per cent last year in North America alone to 870 billion messages and is expected to surpass one trillion messages this year.

But there is some hope. Internet provider ihug offers I-Spy Spam, costing between $2.50 and $3.50 a month to filter out the stuff before it gets to your inbox.

By all accounts it works quite well. Let's hope other internet providers follow their lead. Another promising development is the work being done by companies such as Brightmail and Cloudmark.

Brightmail works by sending email addresses across the web to attract spam. Cloudmark is similar but enlists "SpamFighters" who download its Outlook plugin and contribute spam to the "SpamNet" community.

Both then analyse what they receive and develop spam "fingerprints" - essentially rules used by filters to recognise spam. It's similar in some respects to the "signatures" antivirus scanners look for.

But it's also a little more complicated because while spam email has unique lexicon that can often be recognised, spammers have a vested interest in finding ways to bypass filters. That's why both regularly send out updates of their spam fingerprints to their customers.

While it's still early days, spam-fighting tools like this - if they get enough uptake - could make a difference.

Companies could also be doing a lot more to protect their employees from this daily harassment, not to mention improving their productivity.

In the meantime I'm signing up to Cloudmark.

* Email Chris Barton

Wired

I-Spy Spam

Brightmail

Cloudmark