E-MAILSPAMMING

BY VASILIS ODONTIDIS

Please read carefully, This is secret and confidential.

“It is true that I pray to GOD before I was pushed forward to contact you for this business but I want you to assure me solemnly that you are a trustworthy, reliable, honest and capable to avoid cheating me in this business”

• WHAT IS SPAMMING ?

Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited, undesired bulk messages.

• WHY SPAMMING ?

Spamming is economically viable1.advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists2.it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings

E-mail spamInstant messaging spamUsenet newsgroup spamWeb search engine spamSpam in blogsMobile phone messaging spam

• FORMS OF SPAMMING:

E-MAIL SPAMMING

•E-mail spam

What is E-mail Spam ?

E-mail spam involves sending nearly identical messages to a few or thousands (or millions) of recipients by E-mail, with the purpose of advertising and gaining economic profits.

How spammers operate ?

• Perpetrators of such spam ("spammers") often harvest addresses of prospective recipients. • They create accounts on free webmail services, such as Hotmail, and they use bots

to send the e-mails .• They send it from someone else's computer and network connection,

they use open relays, open proxies or by commissioning computer viruses.• Obfuscate message contents

What is the context of such mails ?

It includes pornographic context ,announcements of get rich quick schemes, unlicensed computer software etc

•The non-commercial side of e-mail spamming

•A number of evangelists have spammed Usenet and e-mail media with preaching messages

•A growing number of criminals are also using spam to perpetrate various sorts of fraud, and in some cases have used it to lure people to locations where they have been kidnapped, held for ransom, and even murdered

•During July 2006 there has been an enormous increase in unsolicited messages containing nothing but three lines from JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit

•Forged e-mail spam has been used as a tool of harassment

•E-mail worms or viruses may be spammed to set up an initial pool of infected machines

•What are the dangers of e-mail spamming?

• It clutters your email inbox• It takes time to download• It is annoying • If you reply to them complaining then usually they retaliate in a most unpleasant way• Children receive spam with inappropriate content• They steal other peoples’ accounts, falsify identities to achieve their goal

Email spam in numbers

Top 12 relaying spam countriesThe breakdown of spam relaying by

continent is as follows:

Spam in numbers

1978 - An e-mail spam is sent to 600 addresses1994 - First large-scale spam sent to 6000 bulletin boards, reaching millions of people2005 - (June) 30 billion per day [4] 2006 - (June) 55 billion per day [5]

Ethical Issues

"Spam is the result a lack of ethics and integrity in regards to promotional activities on the internet. It's not a question of whether or not you get caught. It's a question of maintaining your ethics and integrity while still engaging in promotion, marketing and advertising." --Richard Lowe

There are varying opinions on the ethical aspects of UBEs1.some feel Spam is to be condemned2.some others feel that spam is a mere extension of direct marketing on the Internet3.others take a middle-man approach saying it is up to the end-user to decide what is Spam, and what is not

• E-mail spamming is a new phenomenon in cybernet and thus the basic foundations to fight it with legal act are not yet established

• Net abuse is not concerned a crime yet.

Is any protection against e-mail spam?

•E-mail providers are investing a lot of money in making new filters, applying bots that can figure out and block these emails

•There are a lot of sites and people devoted on tracing, reporting and guiding other people how to fight spam

•New laws allow the prosecution and punishment of spammers

•Discussion

Questions

• Which is your opinion about spam, according to the three different ethical approaches?

• Is your opinion informed by personal experience?

• Is e-mail spamming legal or computer crime?

• Is blocking spam censorship?

•Discussion

January 24th 2004 at the World Economic Forum in Davos Bill Gates predicted:

-Technology would make spam "a thing of the past" within two years.

Question : One month left before entering the year 2007 and almost 3 years after Bill Gate’s prediction and still e-mail spamming is something that everybody deals with in daily basis. Do you believe that e-mail spamming can be fought effectively?

•Discussion

Goodmail’ s approach on fighting e-mail spamming:

“Bulk e-mailer should be charged a penny per message to bypass spamfilters and to avoid being incorrectly tossed as junk.”

Question : Knowing that other providers such as Yahoo were also interested in this idea do you think that by charging e-mails will discourage spammers or is it just another way for companies to have an extra source of profit?

Origin of spamming

Spam was named after a Monty Python sketch that was named SPAM

To watch the video follow the link:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5627694446211716271