“It seems like every time I open my e-mail, there are 10 more pieces of junk mail,” one University student said.
While this statement is true for most e-mail users, sophomore Erica Reid articulated a feeling many people have when they open up their inbox: frustration. For many e-mail users, spam — aka junk mail — has become an intricate part of an expanding computer lifestyle.
The University has taken precautions to keep offensive spam out of students’ University accounts. The computing center Web site asks students to forward any spam mail to [email protected]. The University can then file a complaint or fix the filter used to block the address that is sending the spam.
Reid has three e-mail addresses, and while she rarely uses her University-provided account, she likes that the University takes action against spam producers.
The battle against spam is growing outside of the University, as well.
The Spamhaus Project is an Internet Web site that tracks some of the Internet’s worst “spammers,” companies that send out and support spam mail. Spamhaus also works with law enforcement agencies to pinpoint and remove the more persistent spammers from the Internet.
In August 2002, Spamhaus became aware of two massive spam attacks by two different spammers directed at e-mail users of hotmail.com and MSN.com.
The spammers hit Hotmail’s server more than 52 million times in the first five months, using a method called dictionary attacks, said Steve Linford of Spamhaus. A dictionary attack implements computer software that opens a connection to a target mail server — hotmail.com being an example of a possible target — and then rapidly submits millions of random e-mail addresses, many of which have only slight variations. The software then proceeds to record which e-mail addresses are real, and then adds the addresses to the spammers list.
AOL is another company that has been fighting a battle with spammers. Unlike Hotmail and MSN, however, AOL triumphed in the courtroom in December 2002, where it had been engaged in a case against spamming company CN Productions since 1998.
In its complaint, AOL alleged CN Productions had transmitted more than a billion junk e-mail messages to its users with e-mails advertising adult Web sites.
According to AOL officials, it was the first case in which damages were awarded under an amended Virginia anti-spam statute, which provides fines of $25,000 for each day spam is sent.
“This is an important legal victory in the fight against spam, and it sends a clear, distinct message to spammers: AOL is prepared to use all of the legal and technological tools available to shut down spammers who (flood) the mailboxes of AOL members with unwanted and offensive junk e-mail,” Vice President and general counsel of AOL Randall Boe said in a statement.
In an e-mail AOL sent to its users, the company assured customers that it was “outraged by the number of junk e-mails we get on a daily basis.” AOL also said spam is “public enemy No. 1,” and promised it was doing all it could to keep it out of its customers’ e-mail.
Reid said she has both an AOL and a Hotmail account, but prefers to use her AOL account.
“Even with (spam) filters, I still get junk mail in my (Hotmail) inbox,” she said. She added that while her AOL account gets junk mail occasionally, it happens much less than in her Hotmail account.
While some modern mail servers have built-in protection against possible dictionary attacks, larger systems such as Hotmail and MSN are more difficult to monitor, due to the large amount of e-mail traffic. Hotmail and MSN advise their users to use a long user name with many random characters and numbers until the companies find ways to prevent attacks.