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October 09, 2003

Email SPAM

I have been thinking a lot about SPAM lately. There were a number of triggers for this, the first was that changing ISPs has really reduced my SPAM to a manageable level which is wierd. The main reason that it is wierd is that I do not use my ISP address for anything at all.

[Aside: Many years ago, I applied for (and got) my own class C IP address (which was used for a company that I was working with). I had a NIC handle and all that stuff which were linked to my ISP of the day (this was probably in the mid 80's). The ISP went under and I just got another one but I can no longer do anything about my class C address - I cannot return it to the pool of available addresses, I cannot use it for a new network (routing issues) and I cannot claim an IPv6 address based on it because effectively that NIC handle is disabled because the email address no longer exists.]

My former ISP (Telstra) swears blind that they never ever (cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die) gave out email addresses but suddenly I am missing some 20 to 40 SPAM messages a day.

The next trigger was another blog where I posted a comment and then got some wierd SPAM mail back about registering my email address to prevent spam or something. Oh well, no comment then. Mind you the same thing happened when I left a comment on this blog and I did go to the trouble of following the process because otherwise I won't be able to email my brother :-)

Third trigger was this post by Kingsley about a way of ranking emails to reduce SPAM (and it is worth a read).

The result was that I went back through my mailbox (106 items at the moment) and thought about SPAM and ranking and effective tools. As a result of all this introspection, I think Kingsley is right. We need to be smarter about how we deal with the crap. I would like to have a system like we have in Australia for physical mail (if you label your mailbox with 'No Junk Mail' then no unaddressed mail can be left in it) but I don't see anyway to technically ensure compliance and a voluntary scheme has less chance than the proverbial snowflake in hell. If I had a PA (personal assistant) to handle my mail (like Kingsley suggests) then all I need to do is to work out appropriate ranking rules BUT there is one problem which is new unsolicited mail which is not SPAM - is there any such thing?

Yes. Here is an example (albeit a poor one):

Dear [NAME DELETED],
I wanted to inquire about any freelance contract Web programming opportunities that may be available relating to Web databases, search engines, membership systems, shopping cart/e-commerce and surveys etc.
Warmest regards,
[NAME DELETED]

Is this SPAM? I don't think so. Firstly it was addressed specifically to me at my primary (published) email address (it was not a CC or broadcast mail). Secondly, I am the contact at my company who would decide to hire such individuals. Thirdly, there is no attempt to flog anything other than the writer's personal services. Fourthly, there was no attempt to hide the identity of the sender or source of the message (in fact the senders name and website check out and provide a physical address and phone number). So I don't think this is SPAM.

[Aside: Is it effective? You gotta be kidding me. There are two key problems with approaching me this way. First and most important is the lack of any personal touch (apart from warmest regards). A more professional closure would be "Sincerely" (which means 'without wax' - i.e. without deception) and there should have been some introduction of the person (my name is Fred and I have been doing this for a few years blah blah blah read your website/blog/email message blah blah blah and wondered if you might require a freelance blah blah blah). The second key problem is that I am a techo (and I think that would be obvious from most of the places that you can find my email address) and so this person is trying to sell ice to an eskimo. Besides that, I know a lot of buddies (many of them bloggers) who are 'between jobs' at the moment I would give them work (because I know them).]

Now for the $6 million question: how can I teach my PA to allow this message through and reject the Nigerian SPAM that arrived at the same time? I know Kingsley used phrases like "subjects I'm interested in" but being a techo (rather than a PHB) I tend to see things in terms of code - how can you write such an expression?

Posted by Ozguru at October 9, 2003 09:10 AM

Comments

I used to worry about spam, but then I signed up with knowspam.net

Posted by: Peter Marquis-Kyle at October 9, 2003 09:10 AM

One thing I've noticed is, I almost never get mail *completely* out of the blue. I might go to a conference, drop some cards off, and someone would mail me back. Or, I would have commented on something at a blog, and people would mail me about it. Or, friends of friends might mail me. Or long lost friends would mail me. In all of these cases, people would mention the connection for mailing me : "met you at the X conference", "read your comment at X's blog", "I'm X's friend" and "remember me from X high-school" etc. And X in all these cases is very likely to be words not used frequently in an average vocabulary. These are obvious topics of interest for me. For example, I went to St. Michael's Academy for high school. If someone mails me saying "I was at st.michael's", that would give them some points. If they also mentioned Chennai, then they're definitely legitimate. So what we need is frequency analysis, keyword identification and then keyword matching. BTW, what's a PHB ? And oh, thanks for the link.

Posted by: Kingsley at October 9, 2003 09:10 AM

You might want to look into using a new email client. I'm currently using Blooma coupled with SAProxy. It takes a little getting used to and a little time for it to start blocking the majority of spam. It's doing a good job so far, I think I will continue to use it. Keep an eye on my site, I will put my little review of it out there in a few days. As of now I have a post pointing to my brother's view of the products. Check it out .

Posted by: Tony S. at October 9, 2003 09:10 AM