Anti Spam Control

A former executive of anti-spam group Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC has launched a service that relies on a poem, of all things, to help users and mail administrators combat the increasing glut of bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Dubbed Habeas Inc., the company debuted last week with a twist on trusted-sender and “white-list” anti-spam solutions, that is, those where e-mail from known and trusted sources gets automatically accepted.

What is the idea behind how this works?
Habeas copyrighted a small poem that licensees can add to their headers, the top portion of their outgoing e-mail that identifies the sender.

Under Habeas' business model, Internet users and administrators can configure their systems so they check all incoming e-mail for Habeas' header and automatically accept mail that contains it, significantly reducing the load on Internet systems and users In-Boxes.

Why would this stop spam getting through?
One of the many tricks spammers use to get their mail past administrators is to forge “E-mail headers” so it appears that their e-mail looks like it comes from someone else. Under Habeas' plan, spammers who forge its header can be prosecuted under trademark and copyright law. According to Habeas, it can seek penalties of $1 million or more, shut down offenders through injunctions and refer them for criminal prosecution in severe cases.

Where other services help to identify which is, or is likely to be, spam, this method actually identifies the e-mail you want or at least are prepared to accept.

How is this different to other methods?
Habeas will sell its license only to bulk e-mailers who employ fully verified or double opt in, the e-mail list-building process under which list owners send new subscribers or registrants "thank you for subscribing" e-mails to which subscribers must reply in order to stay on the list. Anti-spammers argue that fully verified, or double opt in, is the only foolproof way to combat spam since it makes subscribing people to e-mail lists without their permission impossible.

However, unlike anti-spammers, Habeas is apparently not trying to force the double opt-in standard on marketers. They are not saying 'if you don't see our sender warrant in an e-mail, then you should reject that e-mail'. Further they are not saying, 'bulk houses, if you don't do double opt in, no one's going to take your e-mail.'

Also unlike other anti-spam services, Habeas welcomes bulk mailers that have some fully verified opt-in lists to license its headers for those lists.

"Just segment your lists. For the ones that use fully verified opt in, go ahead and use our headers," she said. "We're not saying 'our way or no way.'"

Is there a real need for these types of control?
Spam is becoming such a problem that even permission-based bulk mail is getting blocked. Sometimes adjectives go naturally with subjects. One such case is ``unscrupulous spammers’’ a near-redundancy if I've ever seen one.

Wanting to see spammers put out of business, however, doesn’t mean innocent folks should be harmed in the process. We need to be careful vigilantes don’t take over the town. The results are often unfair, sometimes grotesque.

MAPS, an anti-spam group that many in the direct marketing e-mail industry despise, outwardly seems to uses capricious and overly strict standards when deciding to add e-mailers' IP addresses to its Realtime Blackhole List of suspected spammers, a list that mail administrators use to filter out unwanted mail.

Let's be clear on something. The anti-spamming forces are on the side of the angels, in most respects. They're trying to do something about the torrent of garbage polluting our mailboxes every day. Spammers are unprincipled, why else would they forge return addresses? Often they are sheer lawbreakers, pitching fraud and hoping to get the occasional sucker to fall for the scam. In that context, the anti-spammers are doing their best to fight back.

Any other interesting Anti-Spam methods out lately?
Some interesting intermediary-type systems have been popping up. One that's getting good reviews is a Windows-only service called ChoiceMail ( www.digiportal.com). It's a ``challenge and response'' system that forces your correspondents to acknowledge that they're for real, thereby blocking the auto-mailers that send thousands or millions of messages in a short period of time. You can check the blocked messages for mail lists you want to be on, and put them back in your OK-to-receive list.

I tend to think that the best place for filters is on my own computer. But I have been distinctly unimpressed with the performance of the filtering software that comes with popular e-mail software.

The best way to fight spammers is to attack them at the source. This is what some of the anti-spamming operations try to do, by punishing ISPs that allow spammers to use their systems to pollute the e-mail landscape. Again, the innocent sometimes get punished in the process, and that's unacceptable.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au