Hold the spam - unsolicited e-mail - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Home Office Computing, Jan, 1997 by Peter Lewis

Just When You Thought You Were Safe, Junk Mail Has Invaded the Internet

IN NEW YORK CITY, IT WAS THE NIGHTLY SWOOSH OF RESTAURANT TAKEOUT MENUS BEING STUFFED UNDER my locked apartment door. Out on the street, there was the usual gauntlet of panhandlers and shills reaching out for spare change or trying to press sex-club handbills into my chest. It's different, but no better, in the 'burbs. My mailbox coughs up one or two pieces of junk mail every morning, and almost every night at dinner time, the phone begins ringing with offers of cheaper long-distance phone service and carpet-cleaning specials. When I park at the mall, I expect to find at least one advertising flier pinned under my cat's windshield wiper (if it's raining, voila! papier-mache). When I turn on the television or radio, or flip through a magazine or newspaper, I expect to be bombarded with ads, even though the majority of them hold no interest for me.

But now junk mail has come to cyberspace (where it's commonly called "spam"). And like the demented newsman Howard Beale in the film Network, I want to stick my head out the window, or through the computer screen, and shout, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!"

Lots of other people are mad too. According to America Online, which has offered its subscribers plenty to be mad about recently, the number-one complaint from customers by far is about unsolicited electronic junk mail. Not the service outages or the slow connections or the dirty pictures or the overcharging on monthly bills, but junk messages clogging their electronic mailboxes.

Some AOL users report getting dozens of unwanted solicitations every day, ranging from the typical "get rich quick" scares to advertisements for sex-related services on the World Wide Web. It can take quite a bit of time--for which the user is paying by the minute--to sort through a mailbox for the legitimate messages from customers, colleagues, or friends.

The problem is not confined to AOL or even to the other commercial online services. The Internet, especially the global bulletin board service known as usenet, has endured mass electronic mailings of unsolicited messages for years. But in the last three years the practice of spamming has grown from a mere nuisance to a grave menace.

Spamming is the Internet equivalent of restaurant menus stuffed under the door or printed fliers plastered on car windshields, raised by several levels of magnitude. The term spare comes from a Monty Python skit in which the word is repeated over and over, ad nauseam. It has become a pejorative term on the Internet, reserved for any barrage of messages sent to large numbers of people without regard for whether the people want the messages or not.

Using robot mailers, a marketing company can send hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of pitches onto the global computer network, either into public discussion forums or into individual electronic in-boxes. Some of the more sophisticated operations use automated programs to glean your e-mail addresses from old usenet postings, mailing lists, or online service member directories.

Then for a fraction of the cost of conventional advertising or bulk postal mailings, a company can blanket the Internet with sales pitches, reaching an attractive demographic base of educated, affluent computer users. True, most recipients will probably curse and hit the Delete button, but if even a small percentage replies favorably, the rationale goes, it can be a lucrative business.

Commercial spamming is easy, cheap, fast, environmentally friendly, and in most cases legal. It is also rude, intrusive, and obnoxious--sort of like breaking wind in an elevator, playing a boombox stereo at full volume in the park, or sticking fliers on people's windshields in parking lots.

Most small businesses would never dream of sending flatulent, bellowing marketing reps into the malls to solicit customers by littering cars with ads. But perhaps because it's the Internet--a faceless void beyond the computer screen--some otherwise well-behaved entrepreneurs are tempted to use electronic marketing services irresponsibly.

America Online's questionable response to its users' complaints was to choose five of what it said were the most prolific Internet sources of bulk e-mails and ban all incoming mail from those sites. The tactic had several flaws, including the unfortunate result that mail was cut off between AOL and many honorable businesses whose only sin was to share an Internet service provider with one of the bulk e-mailers. (AOL also overlooked that it spams millions of its own members with unsolicited marketing pitches for books, software, and other products.)

One of the banished bulk e-mailers took AOL to court. At press time, AOL had won the latest round against spammers, who argued unsuccessfully that they had First Amendment rights to send mail to AOL subscribers. No doubt similar conflicts will turn up in court as the Internet continues to grow.

For consumers on the Internet and the online services, the only practical defense--a feeble one, to be sure--is to send a message back to the spammer or, better, to the spammer's Internet service provider or to the advertiser itself, asking that the unsolicited mailings stop. AOL has also recently distributed software that gives its users more control over the mail they receive.