Spam is a problem rooted in human nature. Junk mail has existed for decades. The internet makes it easier to send messages to millions of people. In Ireland unwanted electronic mail has doubled in the past 12 months and now accounts for one in 15 emails sent, writes Edward Power.
They are insidious and relentless. Like 19th century snake-oil salesmen, they arrive unannounced on our doorsteps, hawking miracle cures, love potions and get-rich-quick schemes.
Their reach is infinite, their hunger insatiable. They are the spammers, blight of the electronic age, and arguably the most potent threat to the effectiveness of email as an instrument of personal and business communication.
With the profligacy of an unstoppable contagion, spam is multiplying at an exponential rate.
It is estimated that unsolicited messages represent up to 10 per cent of inbound corporate email worldwide, a figure that is predicted to double within the next five years.
In Ireland, spam has doubled over the past 12 months to account for one in 15 emails sent.
Beyond the business sphere, the phenomenon is approaching endemic proportions.
The average US citizen receives 2,200 spam messages annually, with the number set to rise to 3,600 by 2007. On some free email services - notably Microsoft's Hotmail - spam comprises 80 per cent of traffic.
In third-world states such as Nigeria, spam hoaxes have become a booming industry, doing more to drag the country into the computer age than any number of charitable crusades.
Its capacity to irritate, distract and infuriate aside, spam poses a multitude of threats to the business community.
Sorting through unwanted missives consumes thousands of work hours. Heavy spam-flow places servers under stress and clogs networks. The contents of such messages are often illicit, fuelling the spread of child pornography and leaving employees and companies vulnerable to dismissal or lawsuits.
Can anything be done to stem the tide? The answer is a qualified Yes. Internet service providers offer spam "jammers", but these are indiscriminate countermeasures, often failing to distinguish between valid communications and bona-fide junk. What's more, spammers exhibit a base cunning that can be difficult to police, sending email from what appears to be yourself and putting messages in the subject lines that make people think the mail is from a friend.
Nor is prohibiting and prosecuting spammers a solution, says Mr Jim Nail, analyst with US technology researchers Forrester. "Having simple lists of spammers and domains, that's not enough because spammers change domains or addresses to stay ahead."
Several jurisdictions - most notably Germany and Switzerland - have outlawed spamming, but to little avail. "One of the challenges we find is that spam is global. A lot of it gets routed through unsecure servers," says Mr Enrique Salem, chief executive of Brightmail. "So, as that happens, it's outside of any one country's jurisdiction."
It is an unpleasant truth that if you use email and wish to receive messages from anyone outside a restricted circle of close personal and profession acquaintances, you can expect to receive unsolicited messages
The limitations of anti-spam software has forced vexed internet users to adopt new strategies. Rather than trying to keep spam at bay, many are increasingly relying on software that blocks everything except messages from already known, accepted senders. Popular examples of so-called "whitelist" services include MailFrontier, Vanquish and the freeware Tagged Message Delivery Agent. Microsoft's Hotmail also features a "whitelist" option, known as the "exclusive" setting - one in 10 users are reportedly already using it.
The advent of "whitelists" threatens to reshape fundamentally the character of the internet, some commentators argue. Email will increasingly come to resemble mobile text messaging, with users communicating with a closed circle of people on a "buddy list", according to US technology commentator Mr Kevin Werbach. The alternative is to spend more and more time wading through layers of cyber-dross.
His pessimism is not universally shared. Acknowledging that filtering software offers only limited capacity to block unwanted messages, Mr David Bolger, technical director of Dublin internet solutions company Entropy, says that anti-spam technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated.
He cites the development of software which uses algorithms to identify spam based on an email's content, subject line or other headers.
Irish businesses have responded to the growth in spam by adopting stricter control on internet traffic, he reports. Many have installed spam busters, a measure which could prove crucial in the event of legal action by employees exposed to pornographic email.
It is very important that companies have a policy about what email is or isn't allowed.
The law forbids possession of certain content on a computer - it may be considered a valid defence in such instances for an employer to show it tried to place controls on the type of email reaching its servers.
Such is the concern over the deleterious effect of spam on Irish industry that the Irish Internet Association will stage a conference on the topic Monday next.
At the seminar, Mr Cormac Callanan, director of the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland, will warn that anti-spam measures must be deployed judiciously and should not regarded as foolproof solutions. He cites the example of US service provider America Online, which earned the wrath of Harvard University when its spam filters mistakenly tagged emails dispatched to students who had been awarded places at the college as spam and unceremoniously consigned them to the dumper.
"Spam is difficult to combat because it is so simple and relatively low-tech and because it takes advantage of one of the fundamental principles of the internet - that it is a very open medium."
"Fundamentally, spam is a problem that is rooted in human nature. Junk mail has existed for decades. The internet makes it much easier to send messages to thousands, or even millions, of people - so even if less than a fraction of 1 per cent of those reached with spam actually respond, it has been a worthwhile endeavour for the spammer."
