Try avoiding, not eliminating, spam

Bill Gates is on a mission to rid the world of spam, but the effectiveness of his methods is in doubt.

There are times when you look at the world and have to pinch yourself in a desperate attempt to wake up.

Just after I sat down to write this column, I checked the Teletext news and saw an item describing fears that cancer-causing perfluorinated chemicals, used in the manufacture of non-stick frying pans, are creating fumes that harm, even kill, household pets. Caged birds were mentioned.

Let's read that again. Manufacturers are deliberately introducing carcinogenic compounds in the manufacture of equipment used to prepare human food and, instead of prosecutions being announced, the news is of the threat to budgerigars.

As Einstein pointed out, technologies themselves pose no danger, but beware the psychopath in whose hands they are placed. Unfortunately, email is placed in the hands of just about everybody.

The week in which I am writing has been a strange one for news. As if the budgerigars and the Hutton Report were not enough, at the beginning of the week Bill Gates was appearing to promise to end all spam mail within a couple of years.

Before the week is out I confidently expect Elvis to return and Council Tax bills to be dramatically reduced.

Gates is intelligent enough to know what an impossible task it would be to rid the world of spam, but I'll leave it to you to consider what his motive might have been for saying what he did.

The only realistic solutions to the problem are simply not acceptable or desirable, and I suspect we will have to learn to live with spam. Consider the alternatives.

There are three points of possible attack: the sending of spam emails, the payment for goods or services offered, and the receipt of spam emails.

One of the great things about many email systems is their non-geographical nature. My last column was sent from Nepal to London while I was on holiday using an email system which is based in a country other than Nepal or the UK.

That kind of flexibility is so valuable. Would I swap that for a spam-free system that forces me to dial in to a particular country? No way.

Many people use their service provider for email, and these accounts are traceable to a certain extent, but the type of system I used for that last column makes me untraceable, and my identity impossible to determine, if I should want to keep it secret.

No checks are made when such email accounts are opened. If attempts were made to police the sending of emails then they would certainly fail, and I don't see us ever letting go of the flexibility we currently have. It is too valuable.

However, just about all spam is trying to get money out of people, and some form of payment will need to be made and can usually be traced. This way lies part of the solution to the spam problem, but it would need an international agreement similar to those in place for copyright protection.

Those agreements are not enforced in much of the world, and what would be the basis of any prosecution? The only people making payments are presumably those who are happy to have received certain spam mail.

The method I suspect Gates had in mind was to employ more intelligent filtering of email in order to weed out spam. But humans often cannot tell that a message is spam until they look at it carefully.

Think about how you would unambiguously define spam for a human secretary who is going to filter your email.

No, it can't be done, and for a computer system it would be even more difficult. How do you define, electronically and rigorously, 'I do not wish to receive'?

The distinction between a sales email from a company that you have asked to send you regular information, and one who is just trying it on, simply cannot be defined electronically, other than by blocking known offenders - a solution which only works until they change domain. So any intelligent filtering system is bound to filter out some emails you would want.

The only other way that the problem could be fixed is by the worldwide development of a general culture of not responding to spam mails.

This is largely wishful thinking, because although only a small number of people do respond to spam - representing a tiny fraction of those who receive it - the costs of spamming are so low that it is worthwhile for the spammers. If there is a return on the investment, the investment will certainly be made.

I have to say, though, that using an email system which is not one of the well known ones does help significantly.

One email account I have used for about four years has only ever had one email that I would consider spam. Another, from one of the big names, has several each day.

Last time I looked there were well over a thousand free email accounts across the world, and the ones that the spammers target the most are the big names like Hotmail, Yahoo, and so on.

The best thing for individuals to do is to change email address from time to time - keep your address book offline - and use one of the lesser known email systems.