SPAM, in short Sending Pesky Annoying Mails, can be a source of endless humour. One just needs a quick visit to the junk mail box to light up his/her day. Like the time my female friend got a junk mail asking her to avail of a device to ?make the organ worrrk??whatever that meant!! Another girl was delighted to find ?add 2-4 inches? but soon discovered that the gain was not to happen in the region above but below the abdomen! Evidently, it was not going to ?worrrk? for her:-))!
For the lonely and depressed souls, there are messages that say ?Hi? and ?Hello? out of the blue to perk up your spirits, sans spirits! There are also a host of banks offering you easy loans. It?s sort of reassuring, because in a world where you need to run from pillar to post for a simple little thing, here you find people offering help without your slightest mention.
Maximum of the junk mail bulk consists of pornography. Next in line are e-mails offering drugs without prescription (Beware of Docs?). They are followed by e-mails promising easy money to make us rich quickly. Rest are promotions of general consumer products. There is also a spate of e-mails offering lessons in their own trade--the art of hacking into other people?s mailboxes!
How do these unwanted mails reach your mailbox? From where do they get your e-mail ID?
Frankly speaking, it is child?s play. Databases can be bought at cheap rates?17 lakh ?authentic? e-mail IDs of exporters, importers, celebrities, NRIs, manufacturers, fashion designers?just take your pick, together with a mass marketing software-- for only Rs.199! The price varies from state to state. If one is well versed in programming, he need not buy IDs but rather write a programme himself and collect e-mail IDs from the internet. The written code is let loose in the wilderness of the internet to trawl through and gather anything that has the sign @ in it.
In the process, plenty of junk is accumulated as well, e.g. chat slangs like 2moro @ Regal can be picked up by the programme as an e-mail ID:-). There is another system called ?dictionary attack? where the programme tries all sorts of permutations and combinations with alphabets and numbers @ yahoo.com or hotmail.com. By this technique, one can send bulk mail directly or embed a code to some imaginary e-mail and through a dictionary attack, verify whether the e-mail is valid or not.
Once the e-mail gets through a Net user?s mailbox, it automatically sends back a message to validate the e-mail ID. E-mail providers can also sell IDs. One seldom bothers to read every line of a privacy policy. Few of us notice the clause ?Discretion to share Information? in fine prints in privacy policies. If read carefully, we may come across ome policies which state that they also have the rights to sell information to third parties.
Experts estimate that about 12.4 billion e-mails sent are spam, which amounts to about 40% of all e-mails sent daily. The question here is, why do spammers ?spam?? The answer is simple. It is the easiest and cheapest direct marketing tool available. For each direct paper mail sent, the cost comes to Rs. 8-10 whereas it costs just 50 paisa per contact via e-mail. Naturally the spam market is so crowded!
The process of sending spam may be easy but the process of preventing it is very difficult since anti-spam filters can be fooled easily. Suppose someone blocks all incoming messages that says ?Hi!? in their subject line, the spammer will cleverly change the word to ?*Hi!!? and fool the filter to gain access once more. Another way to control spam is to block a particular address. Spammers have cleverly taken care of that as well. It is called ?bullet proofing solution?. In this technique, the original spammer?s ID route is hidden in the electronic underground by using a web host in one country and an ISP in another country and the addresses are kept changing constantly.
Due to lack of effective laws, it is a tough job catching spammers. In Europe, there is a peculiar law where an advertiser is free to send e-mails provided it contains an option for the recipient to opt out. However, the law hardly deters a spammer because he already gets paid for the first e-mail! After that if the recipient opts out, it does not affect him. Spammers turn out to be a clever bunch of people indeed!
Therefore the ultimate truth is that spammers were, are and will be a part of our Netlives.
Now you can fume and curse while deleting junk mails and wondering how to beat them. Literally!!