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Darren Hassan 20279718student.uwa.edu.au
16/03/2010
Abstra
t
Spam is not only a major sour
e of nuisan
e for Internet users, it is very
often the
onduit through whi
h fraud and other forms of Internet
rime
are perpetrated. Spam's use in many internet
rimes has the potential
to
ause great e
onomi
loss and perhaps, more importantly, degrade the
publi
's faith in the ele
troni
so
iety. Spam is born out of an e
onomi
failure that results in more
ost being in
urred by the transmitter and
re
eiver than by the sender of spam. This paper will argue that the only
ee
tive approa
h to
ombatting spam is to
orre
t the e
onomi
failure
that
reated it.
1 Introdu
tion
Internet
rime manifests itself in many guises. Some Internet
rime, su
h as
fraud o
urs in the real world and
an be termed e-enabled, whereas others
forms of
rime exist only in
yber spa
e, su
h as
omputer ha
king. Spam or
'unsoli
ited
ommer
ial
ommuni
ations' [Moustakes et al., 2005℄, to use one of
its many legal denitions,
an be
lassied as an e-enabled
rime. Spam in
the real world is legal and of insigni
ant
onsequen
e, spam in
yber spa
e
is illegal and has major
onsequen
es. Why is it that the junk mail, postal
servi
es deliver, has not swelled to the enormous proportions of spam? The
diering impa
t of spam in the real and virtual world is due to the fa
t that
'the a
t of sending a message
osts the sender less than it
osts all the other
parties impa
ted by the sending of the message' [Cobb, 2003℄; an e
onomi
failure Cobb [Cobb, 2003℄ terms 'the parasiti
e
onomi
s of spam'. This paper
will fo
us on spam, dis
uss the dierent approa
hes used to
ombat spam and
propose new approa
hes while analysing their e
a
y. Se
tion 2 is devoted to
a dis
ussion of the detrimental ee
ts of spam. Se
tion 3 will explore some
nonte
hni
al solutions to spam. Se
tion 4 will deal with te
hni
al solutions to
spam. Finally, se
tion 5 will dis
uss what I beleive to be the only solution to
spam.
1
2 Spam and its ee
ts
Spam
an take on many forms, su
h as SPIT (Spam over Internet Telephony)
[Quittek, 2008℄ and Spam 2.0 [Hayati et al, 2009℄, spam in the form of spurious
links on blogs, wikis and other so
ial media. The most visible form of spam
and that whi
h has the greatest detrimental ee
t is transmitted via email and
whi
h, hen
eforth this dis
ussion will be limited to.
The very heart of the problem with spam is its violation of the fundamental
right of an individual to priva
y. Priva
y in the very broadest sense of the
word, regarding an individual's right to be left alone, as well as the individual's
right to the prote
tion of personal data. In this respe
t, the appropriation of
email addresses and the illegal intrusion into
omputers and servers deprives the
individual of their
apa
ity to
ontrol what personal data is known by others
and their
apa
ity to
ontrol the ow of information into their personal sphere
[Lugaresi, 2004℄.
The ee
ts of spam are felt throughout so
iety. In 2003 Erkki Liikanen, the
European Union's (EU) Enterprise Commissioner estimated that spam
osts
European
ompanies $2.8 billion (USD) in lost produ
tivity alone, whi
h in-
ludes the time it takes people to delete the messages and the
ost of buying
larger mail servers and storage systems [Hinde, 2003℄.
Spam is responsible for more than the e
onomi
loss in
urred transmitting
and storing it or the time lost sorting and disposing of it. Spam is often the
means through whi
h frauds are
arried out, with many
arrying links to phish-
ing websites. Spam is also used to transmit viruses, pornographi
messages and
hate spee
h. In short, the integrity of the ele
troni
so
iety impart relies on
ee
tively
ombating spam and its derivatives.
2
poem in their own emails. Hebeas has said that it will pursue oenders who
brea
h its
opyright through the
ourts [O'Brien, 2003℄.
GlobalRemoval.
om has implemented a 'Do Not Email Servi
e', whi
h is
analogous to the 'Do Not Call Registery' used to prevent unsoli
ited
alls from
telemarketing rms. Individual pay GlobalRemoval.
om a token fee to have
their email address in
luded on the list, GlobalRemoval.
om then pays mass
emails $1 for ea
h address they remove from their mailing list [Hinde, 2003℄.
Nonte
hni
al approa
hes to
ombating spam rely on
orre
tly identifying the
spam's sour
e so that
riminal pro
eedings
an be sort where a law or agreement
has been broken, however
urrently this is not possible. Every email
ontains
information about where it
omes from, but
urrent email te
hnology
annot en-
sure the information in the header is
orre
t [Cobb, 2003℄. Legislative measures
have been seen to have an ee
t on large organisations that rely on building a
reputation, but have been inee
tive at
urbing spam from less
onspi
uous en-
tities. It is doubtful that an entity who spams for illegal purposes is going to be
aware of legislation in their own let alone another jurisdi
tion. The border-less,
anonymous nature of the Internet renders the above nonte
hni
al approa
hes in-
ee
tive at preventing the very worst spam, whi
h is sent by anonymous sour
es
and is illegal in nature.
3
Chi-squared method is based on the premise the vast majority of spam is sent by
only a few (≈ 150) spammers around the world. The Chi-squared method works
by identifying the textual nger print of those spammers and then ltering out
emails with a
ertain likelihood of having been written by them. O'Brien et
al. rst trained the lter on a
orpus
ontaining spam and legitimate messages.
They then tested the lter on a dierent mix of spam and legitimate messages
with promising results.
5 Con
lusion
I believe the problem of spam will not be solved until a solution
an be found
to the e
onomi
failure that
reated it. While it
osts the sender of spam less
than all the other parties impa
ted by the sending of the message, spammers
will nd ever more ingenious ways of avoiding attempts to stop them, whi
h has
been shown in the nonte
hni
al and te
hni
al measures des
ribed.
Te
hni
al ways of
orre
ting the e
onomi
failure have been
onsidered. Cra-
nor et al. [Cranor, 1998℄ des
ribes a system that requires unre
ognised senders
of email pay the re
ipient before the message is read. The payment might be in
the form of ele
troni
ash. The re
ipient
ould then refund the payment if the
sender is known. The payment might take other forms, su
h as
omputation.
Email senders
ould be required to
ompute a moderately hard fun
tion before
the email is a
epted, whi
h would pla
e a signi
ant burden on the
omputing
resour
es of spammers, although this method would not work when the message
has been sent from a third party's
omputer illegally. A payment system at the
individual level would be di
ult to implement as it would require
hanges to
the Internet mail standard and global adoption by every email
lient.
It maybe more feasible to implement a payment system at a higher level. In-
ternet fee restru
turing is another approa
h proposed by Cranor et al. [Cranor, 1998℄
to
orre
t the e
onomi
failure. They suggest that ISPs who generate email pay
the ISPs who re
eive those emails, whi
h would have the ee
t of motivating
ISPs to
harge their
ustomers for sending large volumes of email.
Whi
h ever approa
h is taken to redress the e
onomi
failure, it is important
that those attributes that make email an attra
tive medium for
ommuni
ation
not be destroyed. A ne balan
e must be stru
k between
harging spammers to
prohibit their illegal operations and not inhibiting the legitimate
ommuni
ation
of individuals, otherwise email as a medium for
ommuni
ation will
ease to
exist.
Referen
es
[Cobb, 2003℄ Cobb, Stephen. The E
onomi
s of Spam. ePriva
y Group, 2003.
4
[Hayati et al, 2009℄ Hayati, Pedram and Potdar, Vidyasagar. Towards Spam
2.0: An Evaluation of Web 2.0 Anti-Spam Methods. 2009.
[Lugaresi, 2004℄ Lugaresi, Ni
ola. European Union vs. Spam: A Legal Re-
sponse. 2004.
[O'Brien, 2003℄ O'Brien, Corma
and Vogel, Carl. Spam lters: Bays vs. Chi-
squared; Letters vs. Words. ISICT '03: Pro
eedings of the 1st in-
ternational symposium on Information and
ommuni
ation te
h-
nologies, 2003.
[Levy, 2004℄ Levy, Elias and Ar
e, Ivan. Criminals Be
ome Te
h Savvy. Se-
urity Priva
y, IEEE, 2:65-68.2004.
[Cranor, 1998℄ Cranor, Lorrie Faith and LaMa
hia, Brian A. Spam!. Commun.
ACM, ACM, 41:74-83.1998.