AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo band to block spam

By Jonathan Berr
Bloomberg News Service

NEW YORK — AOL Time Warner Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. said they will kill e-mail with deceptive headers and coordinate the sharing of evidence with regulators in a bid to reduce unsolicited messages, or "spam."

AOL Time Warner, owner of the America Online service, Microsoft and Yahoo said in a statement that they will work with other Internet companies to prevent the ability of marketers to create multiple fraudulent e-mail accounts.

The companies are concerned the increasing amount of spam sent over the Internet will eventually exceed solicited e-mail and prompt customers to cancel online services, analysts have said. About 30 states have passed laws to regulate unsolicited e-mail and there are hundreds of lawsuits pending.

"If you plot the growth of spam on any reasonable chart, clearly at some point it will exceed the capacity of the entire Internet," said Dick Lipton, a Georgia Institute of Technology computer professor.

The three companies may be unable to develop filters that discriminate between spam and other e-mail, Lipton said. "People are definitely not going to be happy if legitimate e-mail doesn't get through." It also will be difficult to stop e-mail that originates from overseas, where some spam originates, he said.

While the companies have touted their abilities to protect customers from unsolicited e-mail pitches for things like pornography, drugs and financial scams, spam has proven difficult to control because it doesn't require sophisticated computer skills. Marketers can turn a profit if only a small fraction of the recipients respond to spam, computer experts say.

"It certainly is positive to see the big folks getting together instead of trying to deliver own proprietary solutions," said Ian Hameroff, a security strategist at Computer Associates Inc., the world's fifth-largest software company.

AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo are "fierce competitors," who had worked together in an ad hoc fashion, said Brian Arbogast, a Microsoft vice president. They hope joining forces will help develop better spam-fighting technologies, like e-mail filters.

"There is no way any of us can solve this problem completely ourselves," said Lisa Pollock Mann, Yahoo's senior director for messaging products.

Unsolicited e-mail can only be reduced through a mix of computer technology, customer communication, legislation, enforcement and consumer education, the three companies said.

"Those companies are pretty hard hit by spam," said David Sorkin, a law professor at Chicago's John Marshall School of Law and the founder of a Web site that monitors spam laws. "They had been working mostly independently and with general interest groups."

Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has proposed legislation that would create the equivalent of a "do not call" list for people who don't wish to receive spam. A study he released yesterday showed that New York City residents receive 8.25 million junk e-mails a day. "Spam is ... an epidemic and getting rid of it is not as simple as hitting the delete button," Schumer said in a statement.