The spam inflection point

When it comes to spam, we're approaching an inflection point. The latest stats from spam filtering firm Brightmail show that by February a whopping 41% of all e-mail was spam. We are, as John Edward is wont to say, about to cross over. At the current rate of growth, it won't be long before more than half of all e-mail messages are unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Put another way, fully half of your time perusing your inbox will be spent with messages you didn't ask for, don't want, and may find offensive.

Many people have already passed that point. Two years ago, I recounted how spam had become the final refuge of desperate companies. One year ago, I documented how spam had so overwhelmed two of my long-time e-mail addresses that it rendered them useless.

This year, I watch in amazement as lawmakers and direct marketers bicker while the tsunami slowly approaches the populated shore. To wit:

Loosened privacy policies. From Amazon to Yahoo!, policies covering what a company can do with "personally identifiable information" such as your e-mail address seem to be getting looser.

One reason Byte Me moved from an e-mail newsletter hosted on Yahoo! Groups to a web log had to do with Yahoo!'s refusal to clearly explain its privacy policy, despite months of e-mail attempts on my part. That effort culminated in paper letters mailed to Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel and other top execs, none of which received any response.

(For the curious, a liberal reading of Yahoo!'s policy indicated that ANY e-mail address someone used to sign up for a Yahoo! Groups newsletter -- whether or not that person directly registered with Yahoo! -- might have been used by Yahoo! and its "trusted partners" for marketing.)

Most of the companies loosening their privacy policies say they're doing it in the interest of clarity and full disclosure. Disclosure isn't the same as discretion.

More efficient harvesting/harassment. It seems spammers are getting better at harvesting and subsequently spamming new e-mail addresses on Web sites. ByteMeOnline.com hadn't been up for more than 24 hours -- with a feedback e-mail address embedded in a mailto: link on the front page -- before the first spam for a Web site search engine submission service arrived. I quickly took down the mailto: link.

Indeed, some spammers have gotten as militant as rabid anti-spammers. A lively discussion this month in the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup reveals that someone who doesn't seem to much care for anti-spammers tried to subscribe many of them, en masse, to all sorts of mailing lists simultaneously. And it would have worked, too, if quick reporting and action by Habeas and Topica (host of the Byte Me Online and Random Bytes lists) hadn't spotted the scam.

Ineffective responses. Microsoft made a big deal out of the fact that Hotmail senders are now limited to 100 outgoing e-mails per day. This was hailed by some of the more clueless press as a major blow against spammers. Ahem. No self-respecting spammer doing any real volume would use Hotmail accounts; they're closed down too easily. If only Microsoft would flex as much PR muscle in spammer prosecutions.

Washington State still has one of the strongest anti-spam laws in the nation. It's state of the art ... for 1998. California may bring its law up to Washington State's level this year and allow citizens to sue spammers. Problem is, these laws only forbid sending UCE with forged headers and misleading subject lines, and the sender has to reasonably be expected to know the recipient is in the state where such spam is illegal. You can hear the spammer chuckling even over a dial-up line.

And Congress still is in the thrall of the Direct Marketing Association which, though it's indicated it now will support anti-spam legislation, has the tiny little condition that any such bill must include the words "opt out." 'Nuff said.

The only realistic solution to the spam problem isn't education, isn't exhortation, and isn't the Delete key. The solution is for Congress to bite the bullet, avoid a patchwork of ineffective and contradictory state laws, and amend the recently-upheld Federal junk fax law to clearly include spam. Period.

Anything else, and the effectiveness of e-mail as a communications medium itself may soon cross over to the other side.