Spam: Enough is enough

After years of tolerating the annoyance of spam, companies and ISPs are starting to take the problem of unsolicited email seriously.

ISPs have been urged to act in their own interests to cut out junk mail, with anti-spam firm Brightmail producing figures which show customers have now grown intolerant of the inbox clutter and are ready to switch ISPs in search of protection from spam.

UK ISP BTopenworld has this week signed up for Brightmail's anti-spam software, following the likes of AT&T and Earthlink in the US as well as MSN and its popular web mail service Hotmail.

Enrique Salem, CEO of Brightmail warned ISPs that if they don't block spam then their customers will move to somebody who does - placing a commercial imperative to act on something which until recently was treated by many as an 'occupational hazard' of living in the internet age. Spelling it out clearly, Salem said: "If ISPs don't provide spam filtering their customers will leave."

Blocking spam has become even more critical given the meteoric rise in the levels of junk mail.

Salem told silicon.com: "If left unchecked, spam could render email unusable." His fears echo those of Eric Allman - the inventor of the first commercial email application. In June this year Allman told silicon.com "There is a genuine concern that too much spam will kill off email. We haven't quite got there yet but it could happen."

In just 12 months the number of spam messages intercepted by Brightmail has gone up from 1.4 million to a staggering 5.25 million. Spam email currently accounts for 36 per cent of the world's email traffic - the bandwidth, cost and productivity implications of such a figure can only be imagined.

Even if each employee in a 1,000-head organisation spends just 10 minutes per day deleting and sorting junk mail, across the organisation that is a staggering 166 hours per day lost to spam - 40,000 man hours per year. If the average wage in the UK is £8 per hour then that's a dent in productivity akin to £320,000 per year.

Brightmail would install its software in such a company's offices for $7 per head - a total of just $7,000. Companies are fast seeing the logic of taking anti-spam measures.

This realisation means that over the past few months companies have started to recognise the severity of the problem they are facing, and many are now making spam their number one priority. As a result Salem admits this is a very busy time for his company.

But how do spammers get our email details? In some instances it is due to companies selling on their email databases, which is illegal, and in rare cases databases are breached or stolen.

However, Salem says the majority of addresses come about through random generation. Applications can take email address formats and generate millions of email addresses. Because of the standard and widely used '@hotmail.com' address, MSN has been particularly targeted by spammers. Similarly, replying to a spammer, if only to complain about being targeted, is great news for them as it confirms yours is a live address.

Brightmail is now employing this very fact to combat the spammers. Brightmail's patented Probe Network consists of multiple email addresses which are all kept secret.

By definition, any mail received into these addresses is spam. Salem claims this approach not only provides an effective detection system but also eliminates 'false positive' detection which can occur when software monitors a message's content. He cites the extreme example of Essex County Council which was particularly hampered by the word 'sex' appearing by necessity in all its communications.

Brightmail is just one of a number of companies who are profiting from the war on spam - and while any such problem for one group of people is invariably a nice little earner for another, Salem points out his company is also active in trying to stop spam at source.

If you have ever despaired at the apparently endless stream of spam and scams which target your inbox, then you might be pleased to hear that companies such as Brightmail are helping to catch, as well as block, the perpetrators.

Salem says his company uses a "follow the money" method for finding the companies behind the emails. Any messages offering products for sale - whether genuine or not - will inevitably have somebody, somewhere, lined up to profit from it. By tracing the person who stands to profit you can then find the source of the email.

Brightmail makes all information it receives available to the authorities who can then take whatever action they deem appropriate. In the case of fraud - such as the infamous Nigerian money scam - the police are probably far more likely to get involved than they would be with overzealous direct marketers.

However, it is at this stage where the fight against spam can break down. One of the biggest problems holding back cyber-crime prevention relates to national boundaries and regional legislation. A victim of fraud conducted via email may find sympathy with their local police force, but if the email originated in a different country, or continent, then it becomes more difficult as different countries impose contrasting priorities on such matters.

Salem said government and law enforcement agencies worldwide need to start taking the problem of spam seriously and co-ordinate their efforts to combat it.

"It is important to have legislation in place within Europe but there also needs to be legislation on a global scale," he said.

"Is it as big a problem globally as drugs or terrorism? No. Is it still a major problem? Definitely."