Jewish World Review Jan. 27, 2003 / 24 Shevat 5763
By Mark Kellner
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
This is becoming an obsession for me, this war on spam. I'm getting a bit
worked up over it, and I'm spending a bit too much time trying to maintain a
spam-free e-mail inbox. A 12-step program might be next: "Hello, my name is
Mark and I'm a spam-fighter."
But before that happens, maybe, the volume of "unsolicited commercial
e-mail," which is the Federal Trade Commission's term for spam, will
diminish. More likely it won't, so my obsession continues - at least until
the men with the butterfly nets come calling.
A couple of weeks ago, mention was made here of Spamfire Pro, a $29 program
fvrom Matterform Media in New Mexico (http://www.matterform.com) that runs
on Macintosh computers. It was a great value at the time; now a new version
(number 1.31) has been released with substantial improvements that make it
an absolute imperative for anyone who sends or receives e-mail on a Mac.
For one, there's a better way to add "friends" to Spamfire's address book,
to make sure that e-mails from your boss or parents get through, as opposed
to those "Get Viagra Now!" junk messages. It can be done with one click on
the main mail display screen. There's also a drop-down menu which lets you
add a particular mailing list (such as the automated weekly newsletter from
your stamp club) to the "good" list more easily. The program's "preferences"
panel is also a click away and can be edited extensively to customize the
software for your needs.
Perhaps the nicest feature in Spamfire Pro - added in just the past couple
of weeks - is the "Revenge Menu." Sounding like something out of a Fox TV
reality show, it's actually quite useful. Among the options are the
reporting of a piece of spam to Matterform (this helps the publishers
develop better e-mail filters), bouncing the message back to its sender
(with a "user unknown" message in the hope you'll be dropped from their
e-mail list), finding toll-free numbers in spam (so you can call and
complain on their dime).
My favorite revenge feature is one I've only been able to use once: a "bug
the Web Bug" device. As the Spamfire manual explains: "A WebBug is simply a
kind of image embedded in an email message. ...As soon as you open a message
with a WebBug in it, the spammer gets a notice that you have opened their
spam. Now they know that your address is a valid address. What's more, they
know that you don't delete spam, you actually open it and read it. This is
an encouragement for the spammer to send you more and more spam, which they
will surely do."
In other words, you can delete e-mail, ask the spammer to take you off their
list, but, hey, it might be too late, because two or three minutes earlier,
you told Mr. Spammer that your e-mail address is just waiting for more of
the junk.
The program's solution is to "bug" the Web bugs in return. Spamfire strips
out all the code that identifies you to a spammer, replacing it and replace
it with a random string of gibberish, or any message you desire. The
software then opens, in your browser, a custom Web page full of sterilized
WebBugs. Spamfire periodically re-loads the Web page as long as it is open
in your Web browser, sending the misinformation to the spammer's server. In
doing this, it hopes to create extra work for the spammer, keep your
information private and squish the Web bugs.
The makers caution that this software should be used responsibly and not for
any malicious purpose. I haven't seen a similar "revenge" feature on
Windows-based anti-spam programs, but would be grateful to learn of any.
Meanwhile, the war continues, and vigilance remains the watchword.
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JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here.
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