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

They are just as much to blame for this problem as the spammers themselves. 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.

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

Levine: I don't think we're ever going to see anybody finally turn a switch and have spam stop, but I do think many of the most egregiously criminal spammers are going to be stopped, basically by social and legal means. There's at least one significant criminal trial coming up where, with any luck, they'll put the spammer in jail, and we're seeing lots of civil trials where the recipient ISPs are finally starting to take advantage of some of the anti-spam laws we have now. They go after the spammers and start getting large judgments against them.

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

It's profitable because it's cheap to send and because some foolish people still click on spam and buy products from spammers. They are just as much to blame for this problem as the spammers themselves. 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.

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

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. Mike: Won't spammers always be able to find these zombie PCs? Fleming: I hope not. That's really a technical issue, but no. I think the ability for people to hijack bandwidth will, by necessity, be closed eventually. People are using different spam filters. There are solutions, and I think it's something that we just need to get through.

But, as you mentioned, even the spammers aren't compliant. 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.

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

There are going to be more spammers finding new, creative ways to get into your inbox. The problem is going to get worse. There may be new things coming down the road that we don't even know of yet. Who would have thought of phishing five years ago? What's going to happen two or three years from now? It will probably be something new and even more horrifying in terms of identity theft, credit theft or financial scams. Who knows what these people can come up with? Or, we can go down another path. We need to reshape the email medium.

We need to find a way to crack down on phishing and stop the spammers cold. Solutions for safeguarding online safety Many of you out there are nodding your head and saying, "Yes, we know all this. What about some solutions?" Remember, I've been in this industry for more than 12 years. I am the president of a software company that's focused on permission email marketing software. I've seen the problems and trends in this industry. My personal belief is that we're going to require a global system of sender authentication.

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. Then phishers use that information to log in to people's bank accounts and transfer money to offshore accounts. This is phishing, and it's a huge problem. I must get two or three phishing emails from con artists every day. Of course, I ignore them. Most of them are from banks that I don't bank with.

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

Mike: Won't spammers always be able to find these zombie PCs? Fleming: I hope not. That's really a technical issue, but no. I think the ability for people to hijack bandwidth will, by necessity, be closed eventually. 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.

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.

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

They go after the spammers and start getting large judgments against them. Since the incentive for spam is basically financial, the solutions are basically going to be financial too. In the meantime, we're always going to have to use filtering. It's basically a social problem with social answers. There's a variety of reasons we still need to do technical stuff. One is that, simply to keep our email usable now, you've got to do lots of filtering.

Interview with Ralph Wilson on email marketing and e-commerce Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

I know that spammers use this, too, but I still think it gets people to open email. Most email filters don't scan for someone's first name, because these filters are through their internet provider. Mike: Do you have any e-books coming up on any topic that you would like to share with the readers? Wilson: I have a few irons in the fire. I am about to revise a book I wrote about a year and a half ago on how to develop a landing base that closes a sale. A lot of people use email marketing to send out offers, like 50 percent off or something like that.

There have been a couple of ISPs that have filed lawsuits against a couple hundred of the most egregious spammers. As far as the federal government enforcing their law, they haven't done it. Until they do, we aren't going to see much change. We need to loudly insist that the act be enforced and some money be put behind enforcing it. Right now, you're right; the medium is under assault. I am a newsletter publisher, and it is difficult for me to get my messages delivered.

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

Now, you could also argue that, "Well, we didn't know they were spammers," but this kind of argument is familiar to the law, and I don't think they'll have any trouble sorting it out. Mike: So does that mean you think companies like Merck pharmaceutical are responsible in part for the Viagra spam? Levine: No, because the stuff they're selling is not Viagra. It's all fake. The only large company I know of that has an incredible connection to spam is Kraft, with their Gevalia coffee -- overpriced Swedish gourmet coffee.

If we start seeing civil recoveries against spammers, even if they don't go to jail, losing a $100,000 civil case really wipes out the profits for an awful lot of fake body-part enlargement pills. I'm hoping that once they see that it's no longer easy money, it will scare a lot of them off. The question that remains to be answered is: Will it scare enough of them off that the spam problem will recede, or will the ones that are left simply crank up the volume because they're more desperate?

Although you can always do that by following the money, better authentication schemes to show that mail that purports to come from somebody actually does come from them will be useful to deter forgery, and if spammers do put their actual return address on the spam, which they sometimes do, make it so you can actually pin it on them. Mike: You mentioned authentication -- what do you make of the recent breakdown of talks for some of the authentication strategies? Levine: The reality is you can't push on a string.

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

Even all the anti-spam software, spam filters and schemes for authenticating inbound email and making senders click links to verify real people didn't really stop spam, because the spammers got creative. They said, "We can send emails with keywords that aren't spelled in a way filters will recognize, or we can send a message that looks like a lot of text, but it's really just a graphic, so there are no keywords to filter out." 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.

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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.