Croplife: SPAM: You can't win - You can't quit - They won't even tell you the rules

SPAM is discussed in your newspaper, Oprah talks about it, it's mentioned in the Sunday sermon - it may have even replaced road construction and weather as the most talked about subject. Spam is defined as unsolicited e-mail, often commercial, sent to many addresses. Spam costs this country millions of dollars a year in lost time. It is frustrating, offensive, but more than anything it's profitable - make that very profitable.

Africa Needs You

If you've received an e-mail from Daniel Oluwa, Chukwubu Eze, Steve Okon, or Mariain in the last couple of years, you have come face to face with the Nigerian e-mail scam that asks you to share in the $25 million or so being held in Swiss bank accounts. This e-mail says you were selected because of your stature, ethics, and moral values - then it appeals to your greed. The grammar is terrible, the punctuation non-existent, and the story is as believable as a three dollar bill. Yet this industry - according to Brendan I. Koerner, a fellow at the New America Foundation - nets the spammers $100 million per year. If that number is anywhere close, then the spam industry as a whole is netting billions of dollars each year.

The economics are obvious - one postcard can be mailed for 230. An e-mail can cost 10 per 10,000. Estimates vary, but response rates appear to be from .03% to 1% depending on the product. If the spammer can send out 10 million e-mails for $10 a day, and get a 1% response for which he gets an $8 bounty, his net is $799,990 - per day.

Fighting The Good Fight

What's being done? There are a number of techniques being used to block and/or allow e-mail. The most fundamental technique is the comparison to an offensive dictionary. This technique will assign point values to certain words. When the point threshold has been exceeded, the mail is blocked. This technique is becoming less and less effective as the spellers get "c.r.e.A.t.1.v.[Sigma]" on spelling their "p0rn."

There are also the lists of good domains and ill-behaved domains known as white lists and black lists. If the domain, e.g. "roysterclark.com," is on a white list, then a subscriber to the white list will let all mail through from that domain. If the domain is on a black list, e.g. "easy-spam.com," then all incoming mail from that site will be blocked. This can be a good technique, but it requires a lot of management. And even then, some good e-mails will be blocked.

Congress, along with several states, has enacted anti-spam legislation that fines the sender of unsolicited e-mail up to $250 per message. While that does seem like a deterrent, there are a number of concessions to the marketing industry that exempt certain e-mails. Also, like gambling Internet sites, spammers may simply move off-shore, out of reach of U.S. jurisdiction.

Perhaps the most promising spam guard is a digital certificate for either the sender or the domain name. A digital certificate is where embedded code in the message is used to confirm the source. For example, if the code "99AC-F342" is registered to roysterclark.com, then any mail coming from royster-clark.com that doesn't have this code is counterfeit. This will take the most work, but it has the biggest chance of success.

Spam-Fighting Tips

What can you do to slow down spam? There are a couple of techniques that you can employ to help out.

* First, have an e-mail account at one of the free sites - Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. Use that one for all Internet registrations like online shopping or registering for access to a site. Once you are getting 10-20 spam e-mails a day, cancel that account and start a new one.

* Avoid chain letters. There are chain letters that ask you to forward them to 20 of your closest friends, and then they send those e-mail addresses to a spam house. In effect, you have provided the spam sender with 20 good, verified e-mail addresses.

* If your e-mail program has a preview pane where you get to see some of the contents without opening the e-mail, don't use it. There are techniques where the HTML code in an e-mail will respond to an Internet site whether or not you open the message.

* Never, never unsubscribe. By unsubscribing to an e-mail, you are telling them that you received the mail, you read it, and it is a good e-mail address.

* If you send an e-mail to a bunch of people, use the "BCC:" (blind carbon copy) rather than the "To:" line. That way the addresses remain anonymous.

This is a global problem that cannot totally be eliminated by legislation or technology. People will stop sending spam only when it isn't profitable. Perhaps the most insurgent change is that the definition for that curious luncheon meat has been replaced by e-mail - who would have thought?

BY BOB PAARLBERG

rlpaarlberg@roysterclark.com

Paarlberg is managing director of information technology for retailer Royster-Clark, Inc.