There is No Perfect Solution
for Avoiding SPAM
by
Andrew Z. Adkins, III
Legal Technology Institute
at the University of Florida College of Law

Tired of those solicitors who call in bunches, usually during dinner time trying to sell you anything from time-share condominiums to lower cost long distance service? Were you aware there is now a government-sponsored "do not call" list where you can list any phone numbers you want NOT called? Well, it only took a dozen or so years to get that puppy passed.

Of course, now that everyone is using Internet e-mail, the solicitors just switch over to a different contact media. Oh yeah - it's also a lot cheaper than calling you on the phone. Electronic junk mail; just what we need. As legal professionals, we already spend enough time dodging telephone solicitors and tossing junk mail. Now we have to spend time deleting unwanted, unsolicited e-mails, commonly called spam. Unfortunately, it's only going to get worse before it gets better. Don't look to the government to do anything about it anytime soon. While there are several bills in legislature, both at the state level as well as the federal level, they're not going to do much, since a lot of spam comes from overseas. If you're bored, can't sleep or simply want to know what states are working on spam legislation, check out the web site: www.spamlaws.com.

There are some things you can do, though, which is the purpose of this article. First is understanding what spam is, how it works, and why you get so much of it. Second, I'll try to relate some ways to avoid spam and third, a few software tools you might want to look into to decrease the amount of junk e-mail you receive. Keep in mind, there is no perfect solution and you may find yourself looking through the "spam trash bin" to see if the anti-spam program filtered e-mail you may want to keep.

According to Jupiter Research, a leading research company that tracks Internet-related trends, nearly 40% of Internet e-mail is unsolicited and unwanted. Actually, I think in my case it's closer to 60 - 70%. They also estimate that the average e-mail user receives over 2,200 spam messages a year and an estimated 76 billion spam e-mails will be sent during 2003.

Spam is defined as "unsolicited commercial bulk e-mail." Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward says, "We may have a hard time defining it, but we know it when we see it." Advertisers and marketeers blindly send these e-mail messages to as many addresses as possible.

So, just how does a spammer get my e-mail address? There are lots of ways. Everybody browses the Internet these days. Perhaps you "registered" your name on a web site. You may have been involved in newsgroups or chat rooms. Spammers also buy e-mail lists (they are very cheap). Spammers also randomly generate name combinations for various domains. There are also SPAMBOTS, software applications that automatically browse Internet web sites, looking for the "@" character on a web site. These types of programs are also called "screen scrapers."

A couple of hints here - first, don't register your e-mail address (or any other personal information) on unfamiliar Web sites. Second, because SPAMBOTS look for the "@" character, you can still list your e-mail address on your web site, but confuse the SPAMBOT by putting spaces in between the letters in your name. For example, instead of adkins@law.ufl.edu, use adkins @ law.ufl.edu. Remember, the hyperlink for your e-mail can still remain your real e-mail address, since the SPAMBOT doesn't read the hyperlink, it reads the text on the page.

There are a several different "spam blockers," programs and services that block spam, available on the market. They range from a few dollars for a single workstation to several thousand dollars for an entire site (i.e., a law firm). PC Magazine, one of the leading consumer computer magazines on the market, indicates their testing for consumer products result in about 75% blockage of spam. You'd like more, but think of the numbers; if you're getting 100 spams a day, using one of these anti-spam products, you'll only be getting 25 a day.

Anti-spam software systems work similar to the e-mail filtering available in Microsoft OutLook and Novell GroupWise. They look at each email, compare the sender against a known list of spammers (often called the "blacklist"), and if found, will "quarantine" it in a folder, just in case you really did want to receive the e-mail. This is often called a "false positive," a legitimate e-sent to you. If you discover that a legitimate e-mail was sent to you but erroneously quarantined by the spam filter, you simply go into the folder and retrieve it. Since you don't want that to be repeated, you can highlight that e-mail and put it into the "whitelist," meaning a list of e-mail senders that you do not want to be filtered. It sounds complex, but it's really simple once you get the hang of it.

There are three different types of spam blockers. First, is the less expensive system that you can put on your personal computer at home or your desktop workstation at work. Several of these products include SpamAssassin Pro 2003 ($29.95, Deersoft, Inc., www.deersoft.com); SpamKiller ($39.95, Network Associates Technology, Inc.; www.spamkiller.com); SpamCatcher ($19.95, Mailshell; www.mailshell.com); and MailWasher ($20, shareware; www.mailwasher.com).

Second, you may want to look at the more sophisticated "corporate" anti-spam software systems. These systems may be software only, hardware only, or a combination of software and hardware. Several systems to review are Cipher Trust IronMail ($27,000, CipherTrust, Inc., www.ciphertrust.com); Brightmail Anti-Spam ($5 - $15 per user per year, Brightmail, Inc., www.brightmail.com); or SurfControl ($9,000 for 500 users, SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com).

Third, you may want to look at outsourcing this to a third party service. Here, the email is actually hosted on their server before being sent to your firm. That way, your server theoretically never gets the spam email. If you discover a false-positive, you can retrieve it from their server, similar to the quarantine folders described above. Several service-oriented hosts include Postini Perimeter Manager ($17 per user, 500 - 1,000 users, Postini, Inc., www.postini.com; Big Fish Gateway Services ($12,600 per year for 1,000 users, Big Fish Communications, Inc., www.bigfish.com); or MessageLabs SkyScan AS ($102 for 10 users per year, MessageLabs, Ltd., www.messagelabs.com).

A last bit of advice. Those spam messages that indicate "if you want to be removed from this list, click here." Don't. All you are doing is confirming that your e-mail address is correct.