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Put an end to spam and phishing by reforming email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

It only takes one idiot out of 1,000 people clicking a spam email and buying a product to make it financially justifiable for that spammer to send 10 million more emails. In effect, one person can bankroll spam that will affect millions of other people. This is what's happening today all across the internet. Phishing is identity theft via spam Then, something new and horrifying came on the scene. Of course, I'm talking about "phishing." Phishing is really identity theft, and it's where spammers got even more creative.

Can-Spam anti-spam law remains useless after first year on the books Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

That's why I created Relemail, an email sender certification service that eliminates the possibility of spam before the emails are ever sent. It also keeps mailers honest through independent auditing of their behaviors, not just their privacy policies. Learn more at Relemail.com. Relemail can play an important role in restoring credibility to the medium of email. Can-Spam, in contrast, has really only legalized spamming. You see, Can-Spam doesn't outlaw spam at all: it technically makes it 100% legal! As I've said all along, this isn't a problem that can be solved by legislation alone.

President of eMarketing Association, Robert Fleming, discusses e-marketing certification and the current state of spam Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

The reasons you get so much spam is that about 80 percent of it goes through hijacked computers. Mike: How is the cost for spammers going to rise? Fleming: Eighty-five percent of the spam you get is not sent through conventional bandwidth. In other words, when you send out email, you have to pay for bandwidth. You have to pay to send that out. A lot of spam is sent illegally through hijacked computers, which is where hackers get into computers and use open SMTP ports to get mail out. It costs them absolutely nothing for the bandwidth.

Put an end to spam and phishing by reforming email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

They can come up with any number of other tricks to keep sending spam to honest internet users all over the world. And they do. For a long time, I was a proponent of the puzzle solution to ending spam, and to some extent I still am, but let me explain why the puzzle solution is not enough. The puzzle solution is designed to add friction to the sending of email by placing a processing burden on outbound mail servers. Essentially, it would slow mail servers so that spammers could never send 10 million emails in one day. It changes the economics of sending spam.

Can-Spam anti-spam law remains useless after first year on the books Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Today, spam is worse than ever. What's needed is either a technical solution (the Puzzle Solution) or widespread certification of email practices. That's why I created Relemail, an email sender certification service that eliminates the possibility of spam before the emails are ever sent. It also keeps mailers honest through independent auditing of their behaviors, not just their privacy policies. Learn more at Relemail.com. Relemail can play an important role in restoring credibility to the medium of email. Can-Spam, in contrast, has really only legalized spamming.

REPPED: Just as I predicted over a year ago, Can-Spam has done absolutely nothing to curtail spam. Today, spam is worse than ever. What's needed is either a technical solution (the Puzzle Solution) or widespread certification of email practices. That's why I created Relemail, an email sender certification service that eliminates the possibility of spam before the emails are ever sent. It also keeps mailers honest through independent auditing of their behaviors, not just their privacy policies. Learn more at Relemail.com.

Put an end to spam and phishing by reforming email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

In effect, one person can bankroll spam that will affect millions of other people. This is what's happening today all across the internet. Phishing is identity theft via spam Then, something new and horrifying came on the scene. Of course, I'm talking about "phishing." Phishing is really identity theft, and it's where spammers got even more creative. They said, "Hey, why make money selling products when we can just send emails to people and act like we're from their bank?" They get people to log in and type in their username, password and identity information.

President of eMarketing Association, Robert Fleming, discusses e-marketing certification and the current state of spam Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Fleming: Eighty-five percent of the spam you get is not sent through conventional bandwidth. In other words, when you send out email, you have to pay for bandwidth. You have to pay to send that out. A lot of spam is sent illegally through hijacked computers, which is where hackers get into computers and use open SMTP ports to get mail out. It costs them absolutely nothing for the bandwidth. Some of the larger spammers that I've looked at were citing $20,000 to 30,000 a month to pay for their operations in terms of bandwidth, phone lines and cable lines.

People are using different spam filters. There are solutions, and I think it's something that we just need to get through. It's unfortunate that it's out there, and certainly we're vehemently against it because it undermines e-commerce. The fault lies especially with these people who are fraudulently going after people's bank accounts through identity theft. When you think about it, it just underscores the fact that this is a very important thing for business to understand and to work with. Mike: Right. There's been a lot of attention paid this past year to staying compliant with CAN-SPAM.

Interview with John Levine on the War on SPAM Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Levine: Actually, the last chapter in Fighting spam for Dummies talks about spam fighting, not for gigantic ISPs, but for small businesses. If you run your own mail server, there are in fact reasonable services and reasonable software you can get. There are companies like MessageLabs that will provide a service and there are a variety of filtering packages that you can try out that I think will be reasonably helpful. Mike: Okay, well that's very good advice you've shared here, in this short period of time.

Put an end to spam and phishing by reforming email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

The worst may be yet to come When it comes to email, we used to think that spam was the biggest problem. Now we know that spam was just the tip of the iceberg! Now we've got phishing, and the financial institutions are getting worried because customers of the big banks in the United States and around the world are falling prey to this scam. This is where it's really starting to get serious. Now we have the attention of powerful corporations, because it's hitting them where it counts. These crimes are being committed against their financial institutions.

Can-Spam anti-spam law remains useless after first year on the books Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

You see, Can-Spam doesn't outlaw spam at all: it technically makes it 100% legal! As I've said all along, this isn't a problem that can be solved by legislation alone. It's going to take technical solutions combined with certification processes like Relemail to really make a lasting difference.

Email marketing service provider Listrak spams president of permission-based email software company with unsolicited commercial email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Since 1993, I've fought against spam, I've worked to create email sender certification solutions (like www.Relemail.com) and I've even created webmaster tools to help small businesses and non-profits build their in-house permission email lists (Zeop.com). And that's why I laughed my head off when I received the following spam email today from John Lozzi of Listrak.com: Mike, I hope that you can point me in the right direction. We help firms and agencies maximize the effectiveness of their email campaigns.

Email privacy now a top concern for 19 out of 20 internet users Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

We all get spam, but the question that's relevant in this case is: Where does the spam come from? Whether or not it is true, most internet users believe that spam comes from handing over their email address by signing up for an email newsletter. They start receiving spam, and, correct or not, they believe it came from that subscription. What companies need to do is resolve that distrust to avoid any incorrect perception that your organization might be selling emails out the backdoor. And the way to do that, of course, is to be independently audited and certified by a company like Relemail.

President of eMarketing Association, Robert Fleming, discusses e-marketing certification and the current state of spam Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Fleming: Email is so widespread, and there is so much spam, and that's such a large issue. That's the hottest issue with e-marketers, along with search engine optimizations. Eighty percent of the people who get to your site get there through one search engine or another. Mike: It seems like you would need to sort of reinvent your curriculum or update it quite frequently? Fleming: We update our curriculum about once every six months. There's always new legislation coming up. There are always things to learn.

Interview with Jeanne Jennings, Online Marketing Consultant Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

It doesn't work with every spam filter, but it does work with some. It is a moving target. I'm hoping that, as things come into play, they will help control the spam issues, and some of these other things will be relaxed. Mike: Let's talk about spam for a minute. Unfortunately, we've seen recently that the Sender ID conversations have broken down. The big guys out there at AOL and MSN can't seem to get along and agree on an anti-spam standards. What do you think will play out with this? Jennings: I think we'll come to a standard.

Email marketing service provider Listrak spams president of permission-based email software company with unsolicited commercial email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

And that's why I laughed my head off when I received the following spam email today from John Lozzi of Listrak.com: Mike, I hope that you can point me in the right direction. We help firms and agencies maximize the effectiveness of their email campaigns. Listrak is a web based email campaign management tool that allows you to cost effectively create, deploy, manage, and gain marketing intelligence through real time message activity reports. Our clients include BBDO Detroit, Bahamas Tourist Office, Motorola, OneTravel.

Interview with John Levine on the War on SPAM Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

One is that they still have very expensive net connections -- so you could imagine what spam costs after paying for every byte that comes out a satellite link -- and beyond that, since they don't have the technical background that we do in the developed world, it's common for people to say, "This internet is just full of scams and crooks and stuff. Even though we might be able to use it to stitch together the provinces of our undeveloped, rural country, just forget it. We're not going to do it.

President of eMarketing Association, Robert Fleming, discusses e-marketing certification and the current state of spam Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Fleming: Well, they are in terms of sending out spam. The tough part of compliance is opting out. That means Acme Corporation has got to take them off the list by law. But it's also got to take them off of all of their partner lists. If one of their salesmen happens to go to a convention and get somebody's email address that had opted out and send them a friendly follow-up email, even though it's kind of personal, then they're going to be in violation of that act. So, there are some issues with the opt-out provisions of the law that are difficult for corporations to implement. Mike: Indeed.

Email marketing service provider Listrak spams president of permission-based email software company with unsolicited commercial email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

And, by the way, if anybody out there is looking for an unabashed email service provider that can send spam for you, be sure to check out Listrak.com!

Interview with John Levine on the War on SPAM Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

It's fairly hard to guess, and basically she doesn't get any spam. So, if you only want to get email from your friends, that's workable. If you're like me and you use email to communicate with the world -- I have my JohnLevine.com website that has an e-mail address that people can contact me through, and I get a lot of work that way -- then you can hardly filter out the world. So that works for some people but not for others. The third approach is that you can fight.

Since I have a fairly extensive technical background, I started working on it, and one thing led to another, so here I am -- the big spam expert. Mike: What is your technical background? Levine: I have a PhD in computer science from Yale, and before I was writing books I was writing software. If you were in the software business in the mid-1980s, there was a temporarily famous program called Javelin, of which I was one of the authors.

Put an end to spam and phishing by reforming email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Now we know that spam was just the tip of the iceberg! Now we've got phishing, and the financial institutions are getting worried because customers of the big banks in the United States and around the world are falling prey to this scam. This is where it's really starting to get serious. Now we have the attention of powerful corporations, because it's hitting them where it counts. These crimes are being committed against their financial institutions. I think that "phishers" or scammers have awakened a sleeping giant in using this tactic. They have enraged the financial world.

Interview with John Levine on the War on SPAM Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

American companies, which means that they are within reach of American law, and we are in fact starting to see increasingly good cooperation. I was in a meeting of the International Telecommunications Union World Symposium on the Internet Society in July in Geneva, and people came from countries all over the world. I discovered two interesting things: One is that big countries, like the U.S., the U.K.

Natural Cures They Don't Want You to Know About Kevin Trudeau See book keywords and concepts

All Congress would have to do is pass a law forbidding credit card companies to process payments from spam e-mail. Any credit card company that processed a payment from a spam e-mail would face severe fines or loss of the right to process any credit cards, or jail. The credit card companies then would take the responsibility of knowing their customers and finding out how business was generated. E-mail spamming would stop. The policing action is simple. All the government has to do is order a product from some spam e-mail and then charge the credit card company with the violation.

New email privacy certification service lets email senders prove they aren't spamming Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

Kim Macpherson of Inbox Interactive, Anne Mitchell of the Institute for spam and Internet Public Policy (ISIPP), Jeanne Jennings of the Jennings Report (www.JeanneJennings.com), and corporate participants such as Jim Diee (The Children's Place) and Michael Crowdes (Dirt Devil). To learn more, visit http://www.relemail.

Interview with Jeanne Jennings, Online Marketing Consultant Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

I'm hoping that, as things come into play, they will help control the spam issues, and some of these other things will be relaxed. Mike: Let's talk about spam for a minute. Unfortunately, we've seen recently that the Sender ID conversations have broken down. The big guys out there at AOL and MSN can't seem to get along and agree on an anti-spam standards. What do you think will play out with this? Jennings: I think we'll come to a standard. I actually spoke to AOL and MSN at a conference in Chicago, and I think we're going to come around. Everyone really wants the same thing in the end.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.