Masters Digital Design® - Email & The Spiders

CREATIVE

GENERAL

PERSONAL

Why is the email address on this site placed inside of a Flash file? Because of email harvesting spiders. If a web site has their address exposed in the format of someone@somewhere.com, you can be certain that within in days, their mailbox will be overloaded with all kinds of junk mail. Over the years, people have tried various methods to conceal the address, often confusing the novice Internet user. Some common variations were:

remove_someone@somewhere.com
someone@somewheredotcom
someoneatsomewheredotcom

And each one would offer a detailed explanation as to how to get the address into your email program so the message could be sent to the intended recipient. Other attempts involved using JavaScript. They all met with varying degrees of success, and none were 100% effective.

These harvesting spiders affect not only the web site owner, but also you, as a visitor. Have you ever left your email address in a guest book that doesn't give you the option to hide it, or make it private? Then you are already likely a victim of one of those nasty little creatures.

Definition of "Spam" (from the web site of MAIL ABUSE PREVENTION SYSTEMS, LLC)

Standard
An electronic message is "spam" IF: (1) the recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (2) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent; AND (3) the transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to give a disproportionate benefit to the sender.

Discussion
1. Trivial or mechanized personalization such as "Dear Mr. Jones, we see that you are the holder of the JONES.COM domain" does not make the personal identity of the recipient relevant in any way.

2. Failing to click the "do not send me marketing literature by e-mail" button in a web sign-up form does not convey explicit permission. Only when the default result is "no follow-up e-mail" AND the inbox impact is clearly stated before any action which changes this result, can permission of this kind be conveyed.

3. The appearance of disproportionate benefit to the sender, and the relevancy of the recipient's specific personal identity, are authoritatively determined by the recipient, and is not subject to argument or reinterpretation by the sender.

4. Non-personal e-mail always places a disproportionate cost burden on the recipient, and is considered to disproportionately benefit the sender unless it was verifiably solicited or by the recipient's willing exception.

5. A message need not be offensive or commercial in order to fit the definition of "spam." Content is irrelevant except to the extent necessary to determine personal applicability, consent, and benefit.

Ever had to use an email address to access certain sites, or specific content on a site? Unless you take the time to read all the fine print in their privacy policy, you have no idea whether or not they will take your address and sell it to some list. Even if they state they will never sell it to a third party, unless you trust that organization or business, you have no assurances. And once you're on one of those lists, you will be inundated with unsolicited commercial email. It's is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get yourself off the list, which will be resold, many times over, to other vendors.

What can you do about it? Keep your real email address from all but those you trust implicitly. Use a web-based email service for everything else. The best one I've found is SNEAKEMAIL. Used properly, you can actually trace the origin of the unsolicited junk mail, without having to know how to read headers. The premise behind Sneakemail is that you create one Master Account and unique addresses within that account every time you have to submit an address. You identify each new address by the name of whom, or which web site, you gave that address to. Example: you want information regarding something on ABC123 web site. You create the Sneakemail address, call it ABC123, and submit your request. You get your information and that should be the end of it. But, 2 weeks later, you start to receive a lot of junk mail addressed to the Sneakemail address named ABC123 that you created. You now know exactly how this address became available to whoever is sending you the junk mail, as the ABC123 web site was the only place to which you gave that specific Sneakemail address. Most ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) have strict regulations regarding the sending of what is termed Spam. If you can positively identify the source of Spam, the sender can lose their Internet service. Or, as in the case of the Buffalo Spammer (May 10, 2003), the offender was ordered to pay $16 million in damages to Internet service provider EarthLink for sending 857 million junk E-mails.

You can also add filters to your email program, but you still wind up with the messages on your computer. And they are taking up room, even though they're in the Trash folder, in addition to bringing potentially damaging viruses and trojans onto your system. Firetrust's MailWasher Pro is a defensive program that helps to deal with all that junk mail if you are already on one of those infamous lists. The prime advantage to MailWasher is that it allows you to bounce back or delete the unsolicited messages, without ever downloading the email to your computer. It returns those messages right from the server, making it appear that your email address no longer exists. While this does not stop the messages entirely, it does make your address less attractive. The program also allows you to automatically report all that junk to SpamCop and Blue Frog.

No doubt, it will only be a matter of time before the spiders become sophisticated enough that they will be able to extract the email address from the Flash file. Or maybe by then, the individuals that believe they are generating increased sales by this method will have finally figured out that the overhead costs and the detriment to their reputations will not have been worth the expense of dealing with list vendors.

And lest you think this is a small problem, read this ARTICLE from the New York Daily News, dated May 10, 2003.

Curiosity peaked and want to learn more? Here are some excellent sites:

ABOUTSPAM.COM	Great resource including investigative tools, sample Complaint Letters.
CAUCE	Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
BLUE FROG	A relative newcomer to the fight against spam, their Do Not Intrude Registry is proactively fighting spam.
JUNKBUSTERS	Information on spam and other privacy invasion issues.
SPAMCOP.NET	Spam Reporting Service to help you quickly and accurately report offenders.
THE SPAMHAUS PROJECT	R.O.K.S.O. - Registry On Known Spam Operators
TRACKING DOWN SPAMMER	How to read message headers.
WHAT IS SPAM?	Good all-round primer on the spam.
HOSTED SCRIPTS.COM	An interesting idea that may make it more difficult for the bots to obtain and filter valid email addresses.
MAILWASHER PRO	One of the easiest, and most efficient, ways to stop unwanted emails from arriving on your computer.

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