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HarborNet and Spam

Spammin News NY Times Article on Spam and Hackers Virginia threatens spammers with jail time We have taken a number of steps to reduce incoming spam - including subscribing to the Black Hole List and preventing our mail servers from being open relays. The asian spam market is huge - A group of ISPs has actually gotten together and discussed cutting off that part of the net. Crazy stuff. A great site for general information is the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email cauce.org Here is a link to some directions for building filters in Outlook Express, etc... Outlook Express Outlook Express 5, 5.x, 6.x Eudora Netscape 4.x There are laws in the State of Washington that allow legal action - but very few people have been able to pursue this course because the spammers are hard to find and pin down as well as the expense involved... Check out the history of this groundbreaking law, http://www.wa.gov/ago/releases/ The text of the law itself is available at http://www.leg.wa.gov/ This state site is mirrored (with more information) at http://www.mcnichol.com/spamlaw.htm And more anti-spam info here telebyte.com The Washington State Attorney General also has information on junk email http://www.wa.gov/ago/junkemail/home.html Another law (proposed law - 2002) from a Washington Sen. http://www.src.wa.gov/news/pr/2002/finkbeinerpr012102.htm Our current anti-spam pages are http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/bulletins/i-005c.shtml and http://www.harbornet.com/notspam/ - it is worth looking over some of this information so that you better understand the enemy. This is a great article on how to keep spam out of your inbox. Spam Article There are also a number of software packages and information available to help you with the spam problem on a personal level. We are working on a new anti-spam page which will include more info about these links but until then I have included our current working list here.

Spam

Inappropriate commercial message of extremely low value. The definition of spam is purposely vague because everybody has his or her own definition. As it currently stands, spam is in the eye of the beholder. The general term spam can apply to messages over many outlets. Some common targets include email inboxes, search engines and discussion groups. Unfortunately, most communication outlets are likely to be spammed to some degree. The more valuable the communication medium, the more likely it will attract spammers. Ironically, spammers threaten the very mediums they profit from.

E-Mail Spam

Email spam usually pertains to unsolicited commercial messages sent in bulk by people you don't know--although there are exceptions to this rule. Some spammers will argue that email spam is not any different than traditional junk mail, but there is one undeniable difference... cost. The cost of sending junk mail through conventional means is very real, including postage costs paid by the sender. The cost of sending email spam is very small, and most of the costs are paid by people other than the sender. The lack of significant barriers (cost) to entry (sending) is often cited as a key problem with email spam. With traditional junk mail, a direct marketer must ensure that the offer & targeting are good enough to more than offset the costs of mailing. With email spam, anything goes, often in the form of shady deals and outright scams. While the monetary costs of emailing are small, there are other non-monetary costs that junk emailers face; the risk of getting kicked off of their ISP or webhost, plus the risk of tarnishing their name within the legitimate marketing community.

All Dead Spam

38,601,343

Death began on 02/14/03

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