SFGate

Spam Wars Markets battle with e-mail activists over your inbox

Carrie Kirby, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, June 2, 2001

Kelly Thompson gets screamed at a lot on the job. In e-mails and on the phone, she's been called an "uppity chick," a "snippy little thing" and worse. The organization she works for has been described as an "onslaught from Satan."

Thompson, 34, gets this abuse because as a professional spam fighter, she has to call e-mail marketers -- or their Internet service providers -- and warn them that they are about to be practically kicked off the Internet for sending unwanted junk mail, or "spam." This usually does not go over well.

But the name calling doesn't faze her because she believes that she is on the right side of a battle between good and evil, between innocent Internet users and the spammers who clog their networks with unwanted commercial messages. She works for the Mail Abuse Prevention System, a Redwood City not- for-profit organization that is at the center of a war over the world's e-mail boxes.

Marketers want the right to use e-mail as freely as they use the postal service, but spam opponents argue that e-mail advertising should be controlled,

not only because it's annoying, but because it costs the recipients money. When Internet users pay ISPs for Internet service, part of what they're paying for is the delivery of all that e-mail; the higher the mail volume, the higher the costs.

In the absence of a strong national law against spam -- Congress is discussing several limited bills now, but none of them would completely criminalize spam -- MAPS has become a de facto inbox avenger. It is applauded in that role by ISPs, which bear the brunt of spam's costs, and many other spam haters.

But the group is not universally loved. In fact, MAPS has been involved in five lawsuits with different companies that object to being labeled spammers by MAPS. So far, none of those cases has resulted in a ruling against the organization, but three are still in court. And recently MAPS' tactics have been criticized by a coalition of groups that support free speech online, including the American Civil Liberties Union. To those groups, any impediment to the free exchange of information online -- even in the name of spam prevention -- is a problem.

THE BLACK HOLE LIST

MAPS (spam spelled backward) fights junk mail by maintaining the "realtime black hole list," a directory of known spammers. It makes the list available for free -- it also has a faster, paid-subscription version -- to Internet service providers and companies that, in turn, use it to block the marketers' access to their networks. The list is also used by some big companies that sell bandwidth to many ISPs. The result is that blacklisted companies find themselves cut off from a large portion of the Internet. Their e-mail bounces back from as much as 40 percent of recipients, according to MAPS' estimates. The Web sites of those listed also become unavailable to many users.

That's too much power for a self-appointed group to wield, critics complain.

A common cry in the lawsuits is that businesses on the blacklist lose money because they are cut off from so many Internet users. Jozsef Nemeth, owner of a small New Hampshire firm called Black Ice Software, estimates that his company has lost about $200,000 as a result of getting listed by MAPS. He has had to suspend e-mail marketing during an ongoing court battle with MAPS.

"We were paying thousands of dollars a month for banner ads in legally binding contracts and they were blocking our Web site," said Nemeth, who is demanding $500,000 damages from MAPS. MAPS says Black Ice sent information about its software products to people who didn't want it. But Nemeth said his company only sent information to customers who had signed up to receive it.

For the record, MAPS points out that it doesn't block any Internet traffic - - the ISPs that use its list do all the blocking. MAPS simply publishes a list of problem Internet addresses, which it considers a service similar to Consumer Reports' product reviews.

SPAMMERS SELECTED CAREFULLY

Any Internet user can bring a spammer to MAPS' attention, but the group investigates each complaint before adding a spammer to the list. First, a MAPS employee verifies that a piece of e-mail fits the group's definition of spam, which is any message that the recipient has not agreed in advance to receive. Then, MAPS calls the ISP that the spam came from, or the company responsible for the unsolicited e-mail, and asks them to stop the practice. Since most ISPs actively fight spam on their own networks, they often immediately boot the offender from their networks.

Only if attempts to stop the problem fail is a new name added to the list. And as soon as the offender promises to stop spamming, they can be removed.

But some marketers complain that MAPS' definition of spam sets the bar too high. According to MAPS, anyone who wants to advertise via e-mail must go through a process referred to as "double opt in." This is how it works: If a dog owner signs up to receive e-mail notifications of dog food sales at the local pet shop, the store must first e-mail that customer and ask if they're sure they want to be on the list. Only if the customer confirms that he really,

truly wants to know about kibble discounts can the pet shop proceed to e-mail the customer. According to MAPS, companies that don't go through this process are spammers -- even if they're mailing people who willingly signed up for information.

"We would lose a substantial amount of our current list because people simply do not reconfirm," said Clark Stone, a San Jose attorney who is representing Black Ice, the small software firm that's in court with MAPS now. "That would be a financial disaster for the company."

Yesmail.com, a Chicago e-mail marketing firm, sued when MAPS threatened to put it on the spam list if it didn't adopt the double-opt in process. But eventually, Yesmail agreed out of court to do it MAPS' way.

LIST GOES TOO FAR

Others critics complain that MAPS carries its mission too far. It sometimes blacklists not just individual spammers but entire ISPs that it feels aren't adequately preventing their customers from spamming. Companies that sell bulk e-mail software used by spammers are also on the list, and so are ISPs that provide Web sites to such companies.

When an ISP gets listed, all its customers can end up getting blocked. Thousands of innocent people get lumped in with advertisers trying to foist their messages on the public.

That happened to Bennett Haselton, whose Web site ended up on the list because Media3 Technologies, the company that provides his Web site, also hosts some companies that sell mailing lists and software used by spammers. After failing to resolve the issue, MAPS added a block of Internet addresses hosted by Media3 to the blacklist. One of the approximately 250 Internet addresses listed was Haselton's.

Haselton, who happens to run an organization opposed to Internet censorship,

was outraged to find his Internet communications hampered even though he had never sent spam. In his case, MAPS' list was being used by Abovenet, a huge bandwidth provider that sells Internet connections to Media3 Technologies and other service providers.

Haselton said the problem with MAPS is bigger than his Web site getting blocked. He thinks MAPS, and ISPs that use it, are censoring the Internet and keeping it secret from the average user. He recently got together with other advocates of free speech online -- including the American Civil Liberties Union -- and released a statement to the press criticizing the practice, which he calls stealth blocking.

SEPARATION OF INTERESTS

MAPS has even been accused of using spam fighting as a cover for its own business interests. Andrew Brunner, a Pennsylvania businessman who sells bulk e-mail software, set up the Web site www.combat.org to publicize his belief that MAPS co-founder and Internet pioneer Paul Vixie is using MAPS to monopolize the online marketing industry himself.

Vixie and MAPS co-founder Dave Rand have final approval over all the listings that go on MAPS' black hole list, and they both are paying the organization's legal fees.

Vixie, president of Paix.net, a company that helps ISPs cooperate on traffic-flow issues, says he keeps his interest in fighting spam separate from his career. Until recently, he served as chief technical officer of Abovenet, the backbone service provider that used MAPS' list to block Media3. Abovenet was co-founded by Rand, but according to Vixie, there are no business ties between MAPS and Abovenet.

MAPS responds to all this criticism with one central belief: The owners of computer networks -- from huge ISPs to small home networks -- have the right to accept or refuse any e-mail traffic they want. For Thompson, a personal experience drove this point home and launched her on her spam-fighting career. It happened in 1995, when she was running the computer network of a professional society in Maryland.

"We had a spammer who sent a huge catalog to every employee. It crashed my server every time I brought it up for three or four days," Thompson recalled.

"That server was our property," she said, still smarting at the affront. "They didn't have the right to deprive us of the use of that server."

Since then, she has taken her occupational hazards in stride. In fact, she recently thumbed her nose at one detractor by registering a new address on the Web: www.uppitychick.com.

CANNING SPAM AT HOME

Despite MAPS' efforts, most people are bothered by unwanted junk e-mail every day. Here are a couple ways to fight it.

Report spammers

Mail Abuse Prevention System www.mailabuse.org/rbl/notifyfaq.html

Spam Recycling Center www.chooseyourmail.com/SpamInstructions.cfm

Filter your mail

Most e-mail filtering products are designed for Internet service providers or company networks. If yours isn't keeping out spam, complain. There are several personal e-mail providers that advertise spam-free accounts, but unfortunately they're run by marketers themselves. In exchange for free accounts, they require you to accept commercial messages from a limited number of advertisers. It's a trade-off.

Mailshell www.mailshell.com

MyCYM (formerly MailCircuit) www.mailcircuit.com

Keep your sense of humor

You think you hate spam in your in-box? Imagine how Hormel, the manufacturer of Spam canned meat feels. Actually, they say it's not so bad.

Spam www.spam.com/ci/ci_in.htm

-- Anonymous, June 02, 2001

Answers

Good old ACLU. Head up their ass as always.

-- Anonymous, June 02, 2001

Well, as much as I hate unsolicited email, I can see a similarity to it and the junk mail that goes through the USPS.

I have read some folks suggestions on handling the junk mail by returning it. This does not work. Most junk mail is then received back into the mailstream, has to be re-handled, re-sorted, re-directed, stamped return to sender, re-sorted again, and most of it ends up being shredded by the USPS. this drives up costs for the USPS, which raises the postage rate. [Roughly 3 hours of my typical 8 hour day is spent casing RTS [return to sender] mail. Most of that is junk mail, and most of that is shredded.

If we eliminated junk mail completely, just imagine what the cost of mailing a letter would be.

Now, back to spam email. First thing. Never send it back! [RTS] That will get you on so many other lists that you will completely freak out.

If it is just selling something you're not interested in, trash it.

If it is offensive in content, or is sent repeatedly, then alert your ISP by sending them all the coding info, and the email itself. Just forward it. But you have to include all the codes. [codes may not be the right word, but some of you know what I mean.]

It is best to just trash it unopened if you don't recognize the sender, it may be a virus or something.

I sure wish folks would just trash the junk mail they receive instead of returning to the USPS. T'would make my job more pleasant. You wouldn't believe some of the things that people write on the mail, and all of it illegal. No one is allowed to write on mail pieces, ya know.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 2001