Web giants to declare war on spam

28/04/2003 Written by electricnews.net

Three of the world’s largest tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies — Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft — are to announce details of a major offen­sive designed to com­bat unwanted e-​mail.
The ini­tia­tive, details of which are expected on Mon­day, will see the three rivals coop­er­at­ing and call­ing on other tech­nol­ogy lead­ers to par­tic­i­pate in mea­sures aimed at check­ing the ris­ing flood of spam.

Already unwanted mail is on track to make up some 40 per­cent of e-​mail by the end of 2003: AOL Time Warner, Yahoo and Microsoft say they fear that peo­ple will sim­ply stop using e-​mail if spam is not stamped out.

A num­ber of soft­ware pack­ages already exist to help Inter­net users fil­ter out unwanted mail mes­sages — most of which ped­dle porn, Via­gra, and dubi­ous finan­cial and med­ical ser­vices — and the Euro­pean Union is seek­ing to make unso­licited e-​mails ille­gal across mem­ber states. But the ini­tia­tive from AOL Time Warner, Microsoft and Yahoo is an unprece­dented, top-​level offen­sive from the Inter­net indus­try itself, designed to track down spam­mers and turn them over to the author­i­ties.

Brian Arbo­gast, a vice pres­i­dent at MSN, told reporters over the week­end that the indus­try will coop­er­ate to drive spam­mers out of busi­ness.

The com­pa­nies will coop­er­ate to locate and pros­e­cute so-​called “king­pin” spam­mers, pro­mote anti-​spam fed­eral leg­is­la­tion that clearly tar­gets such spam­mers and estab­lish tech­ni­cal stan­dards to com­bat the men­ace. Already each com­pany is tak­ing steps sep­a­rately to fight the prob­lem; most recently, AOL ear­lier this month filed five fed­eral law­suits against spam­mers it accused of send­ing 1 bil­lion junk mes­sages.

Those law­suits sought dam­ages of more than USD10 mil­lion, but the fact that most defen­dants were listed as “John Doe,” actual name unknown, under­lines the extent to which spam has become a phan­tom men­ace, with the worst offend­ers eas­ily able to con­ceal their iden­ti­ties with bogus sender infor­ma­tion and tem­po­rary mail accounts.

The anti-​spam ini­tia­tive being launched on Mon­day comes ahead of this week’s pub­lic forum on spam, hosted by the Fed­eral Trade Com­mis­sion in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Start­ing Wednes­day, the three-​day forum aims to explore spam issues includ­ing decep­tive rout­ing and sub­ject infor­ma­tion in mes­sages, the finan­cial cost of the prob­lem, best prac­tices for e-​mail senders and receivers, and secu­rity weak­nesses that con­tribute to spam, such as open relays and open proxies.