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Less Tangible

It's Getting Worse



22 April 2002
by Marc Zeedar
Contributing Columnist

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I hoped it was my imagination, but it's not: spam -- unsolicited email -- is getting worse.

Advertising my various email addresses on websites, I've always gotten a lot of spam (50-60 per day). While it was annoying, it wasn't the end of the world. In the past six months, however, my spam levels have risen to ridiculous proportions. Now I typically get over 300 per day. That's at home. My work account averages about 100.

Worse, I've started noticing some disturbing trends in spam.

Duplicate Messages
Most of the spam I get are duplicates. Spammers send the same message to ten of my email accounts, so I get ten copies of that same spam. This is exceedingly annoying. One message isn't that big a deal, but if I'm really not interested in making $10 million overnight, what makes the idiots think sending me ten copies will convince me?

Deceptive Subject Lines
It used to be spam was easily identified by the subject line. But now spammers are resorting to outright deceitful subjects. They try to come up with subject lines that will make you think it's a legitimate message. Generic stuff like "re: Meeting" or "Hello" or no subject at all. Sometimes these force you to check the message to make sure it's not a real email.

(As an aside, this is the number one reason I refuse to use any email program that supports HTML. With HTML, it's too easy to include a reference to a website so that just opening the email gives the website a hit and confirms that you received the email. Some people have told me that you can "turn off" HTML support in email programs, such as Apple's Mail program in OS X, but even that doesn't seem to work for me: HTML spam shows up with graphics and fonts and stuff and I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Worse, Apple's Mail program doesn't give you a way to select a message without opening it: just clicking on the email views it!)

My solution to the deceptive subject line is to look at the sender's name. Usually they're something idiotic like "bjuyajpozkcurdim@yahoo.ie" and I know it's spam without even reading the message.

HTML Spam
Speaking of HTML, that's another pet peeve of mine. I hate HTML email. I can't even read it in Claris Emailer, my preferred email client, where it just shows up as an attachment. (Actually, Emailer's cool: I can drag the attachment to the Emailer icon and it will open it as a text file, so I can read it, but of course it's got all the HTML garbage.)

All those HTML files just pile up, though, wasting disk space. (They aren't deleted when I delete the email message.) The other day I (reluctantly) did some clean-up and threw away over 7000 of these HTML attachments (they're numbered by Emailer) and recovered 115MB of hard disk space!

Even dumber, some of the spam I get is completely empty: it just says something to the effect that if I can read this, I don't have an HTML-enabled email client. Brilliant sales message. ;-)

Large Attachments
Another trend I'm also seeing is large attachments. HTML email is bad because it wastes bandwidth, but when marketing idiots start sending me large attachments (usually pictures or animation files), that's getting ridiculous. That's like a telemarketer calling you collect!

Some of this is caused by viruses that forward large attachments from the computers of morons, but I still classify this stuff as spam since it's unwanted.

Grammatical Errors
When I get an email saying, "Your already aproved" that tells me something about the quality of the company sending the message. Yes, I really want to send them my money.

Greek Messages
Oh, and messages in other languages are useful, too. I get Spanish, Russian, and stuff like "=90=84=96=F7=DF=84=F7JSP=AD=C8=9F=92=F7=97=AA=99= =B5=9FISP=A3=A8=A6=F7=8C=8E=91=B3=88=AB=B5=9FJ" (which I can only assume is some sort of Asian spam).

Extremely Vulgar Sex Spam
When I first started getting email, I got the occasional "Pam Lee Sex Video for $19.95" message. Not of the slightest interest to me, but not exactly shocking. Now I see extremely vulgar and disgusting spam messages, where the subject lines include foul language and descriptions of perverted sex acts.

Now I don't open these messages, so I can't tell you what they include inside, but it really bothers me when the subject lines contain material inappropriate for children. If I had kids, I'd have serious concerns about them surfing the 'net without supervision, but with the growing trend toward explicit spam, I'd hesitate them even having their own email account!

Subscribe Spam
I have several low volume opt-in mailing lists for my software business and personal sites. These are simple subscribe-on@ subscribe-off@ email addresses and I just use a filter which adds or removes the person's name to a particular address group. Because spammers are so stupid, I now get email like "subscribe-on, get a free coffee filter if you order now!"

Conveniently, the same spams come to both subscribe-on and subscribe-off addresses, so they're added and removed and don't clutter up my mailing lists. But since my filter also sends a confirmation email to the usually fake return address, I get message failures bouncing back to me all the time. It's very lame because I have to check every failure message in case it was a failure of a legitimate message I sent out.

Faster Propagation of Email Addresses
Years ago when I got my own domain name, one of the benefits was unlimited email addresses. I only had one email account, but all mail sent to the domain came to that account, so I could create as many "virtual" emails as I wanted. One of the things I began to do was use unique emails for each company that wants my email so I could tell if the company leaked my email address. To make what could be a confusing process easy, I simply used the name of the company as my email address. So Palm knows me as palm@, Adobe as adobe@, Apple as apple@, etc., with the latter part of the address being my domain name.

When I first started doing this, I found most companies were honest and kept my email address private, but a few weren't. Gradually, I'd start getting spam addressed to those addresses. Once I noticed, it was easy to blacklist those emails and have nothing to do with the company any more.

Recently, I've noticed that when this happens, my email is given out to hordes of spammers at a much faster rate than before. For instance, a couple months ago I noticed my palm@ address had been compromised. Before I could even complain to Palm about the leak, I was deluged with spam. I did a quick count for the month of March: I had received over 180 message addressed to my palm@ address!

I reluctantly closed down that address at the mail server and told Palm about it. Now Palm has no way to contact me, a valuable customer. But that's what they get for giving away my email address.

The point here is not to complain about Palm, but to point out how rapidly my email address was spread. I did receive a nice email of concern from someone at Palm who wanted me to forward him the spam I'd received so he could trace the leak, but once I told him I'd gotten over 180 messages that month, I never heard back. I guess even he realized the futility of trying to stop that flood. That email address is pretty much dead to me forever. It'll take a decade to get it removed from all the marketing lists.

Unused Accounts Get Spam
It used to be you had to promote an email address, like put it on a website or post it to a newsgroup, to start getting spam to that address. No more. Now just the mere act of creating an account gets you spammed.

I've got a few accounts I rarely use and I'm finding that now they get spam! I recently checked the email account with my ISP, an account I've never used since I got DSL a couple years ago, and I was shocked when it contained hundreds of emails. I downloaded them and they were all spam. I deleted them all, but when I checked the account again a few days later, there were several more spams. That disgusting: since it's my ISP account, I can't change the email address, so that account is useless.

If you don't believe creating an account brings in spam, just create a new Hotmail account. Within days you'll start collecting spam, even if you never use the account!

I have no idea how these email accounts are discovered by spammers: I've heard that spammers are so desperate (and computing power so cheap) they'll actually generate emails to common names, like marc@hotmail, in the hope they'll get lucky and hit on a valid email address.

Spam from Reputable Companies
Another trend that's really frightening, is when companies get third parties to spam you on their behalf so they can claim they had nothing to do with it.

A lot of "associate"-type programs promote this. The person sending the email gets a cut for each purchase or new customer, so these people find spam as a useful way to reach large numbers of people.

Recently, for instance, I've gotten quite a few spams trying to get me to join Netflix, the DVD rental program.

First off, I'm already a member and have been for years. Second, I don't do business with companies that send or support spam. But these Netflix ads are not sent by Netflix, but by other companies that, apparently, receive some kind of kickback. I've complained to founder@netflix.com, but have never= received a (non-automated) response. If it continues, I'm going to call and complain, and if that doesn't work, I'll have no choice but to cancel my Netflix service.

Pseudo-Spam
While I generally don't consider email from companies I do business with spam, there are exceptions. For instance, though I've told Apple I don't want HTML email, various departments at Apple continue to send me messages that are completely blank, with only "non-HTML email client" message. Why even bother?

Other companies seem to think I'm a millionaire. A couple years ago I bought my surround sound system from HiFi.com and it's excellent, but every week since then they send me offers like "$100 off $750 purchase." Come on! How many surround sound systems do I need? An email a month is plenty, folks.

Lately Amazon's started sending me emails promoting stuff they think I'll like. "As someone who's bought books by Tom Clancy, we think you'll like Danny Bonaduce's new autobiography..."

While Amazon's predictive technology isn't the worst on the planet, it's certainly not perfect. Just because I once bought a sewing book as a gift doesn't mean I have the slightest interest in sewing.

And please, Amazon, stop sending me promos for DVDs I already own!!!

Doesn't Even Apply
I can't figure out why spam is at all successful. First of all, only a moron would assume an unsolicited message promising great wealth or health or magic beans or whatever could possibly be true. But I guess there's a high percentage of morons on the Internet, because spam apparently works.

Second, eighty percent of the spam I get doesn't even apply to me. I don't need bigger breasts. Nor do I need software to "make Windows more reliable" (that's an obvious impossibility, unless you're replacing it with Mac OS X ;-).

But the bottom line is I never read or reply to spam, so why do they keep sending it to me? Do they think persistence will get me try some "herbal viagra" or a "get rich overnight weight loss" scheme?

Enough already.

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about the author

Marc Zeedar has been a Mac fan for over 13 years. He earns his paycheck using Macs in graphic design and prepress, but he lives for writing fiction. He is also the CEO of Stone Table Software, a successful Macintosh software business.


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