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Spam will inspire its own undoing

By Burt Lum

In refined circles, spam goes by the term "unsolicited commercial e-mail" (UCE) or "unsolicited bulk mail" (UBE).

But let's face it, the scourge of the Internet doesn't even deserve to be called spam (since I rather like Spam musubi). Unwanted e-mails are a growing epidemic guaranteed to affect everyone with an e-mail address sooner or later.

That's why groups at high levels are working to address the issue. In January, I was invited to a round-table discussion on the issue conducted by the Global Internet Project (at www.gip.org).

The panel included Internet luminaries such as Vint Cerf, senior VP of architecture and technology at Worldcom; John Patrick, former VP for Internet technology at IBM; Hawai'i's own David Lassner, CIO at the University of Hawai'i; and Orson Swindle, member of the Federal Trade Commission, among others.

The conclusion they reached, for better or worse, is that there is no silver bullet to wipe out spam.

Swindle says the federal government does not foresee legislation to prohibit spam. It would be difficult to enforce, and the perpetrators would simply move outside U.S. jurisdiction.

Both Cerf and Lassner emphasized education and giving people tools to combat spam. This could include recognizing and reporting any incidents of deception and fraud that are governed by federal regulations.

A friend of mine, Jackie Wah, sent me an article from the New York Times (at www.nytimes.com/2003/02/09/magazine/09SPAM.html) that captures many of the salient issues. It concurred with a point made at the Global Internet Project: The Internet is self-regulating and self-healing, and will introduce its own set of tools to combat spam.

One example is SpamAssassin (www.spamassassin.org), geared to ISPs running Unix e-mail servers and commonly implemented as a service to the end user.

More such tools will become available as a way to control the proliferation of spam. I remain hopeful when the issue is met with innovation. ;-)

Burt Lum is one click away at burt@brouhaha.net.