BANGALORE, INDIA: You know what spam is, and have definitely been at its receiving end more than once. If I were to define spam, I would say it is something that floods the Internet with multiple copies of a single message, in an attempt to land it in mailboxes of users who would not otherwise choose to receive it.

It is estimated that 97 Per cent of email messages sent over Internet are spams. Most of these spam mails are commercial advertising, often of dubious products and schemes, or quasi-legal services, but often contain a payload in the form of a potential virus which can play havoc with your computer and precious data. Spams also involve direct email message transmissions, thereby, choking your mailbox. 

Symantec August 2009 State of Spam Report highlighted that a new variant of 419 spams were observed where spammers tried to exploit voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services. It also reported a trend, whereby spammers claim to offer solutions that eavesdrop on phones. Spam mails create problems for an individual as well as businesses. Apart from the financial impact, the personal pain and loss that it can cause is huge, especially, in the case of phishing schemes.

According to McAfees March 2009 Spam Report, time for an employee to read, trash, and get back to work is around 30 seconds after spam filtering accuracy of 95 Per cent, leading to a loss of productivity of $0.50 per day per employee (assuming the employee gets $30 per day). Annually, the company would lose $182.50 per employee, and a staggering $41,000 per 1 Per cent of spam allowed for a company employing 1,000 employees. Worldwide, spams will cost a total of $130 bn this year, as per Ferris Research which is a 30 Per cent increase over the 2007 estimates. Moreover, spam email has been discovered to have several harmful effects on the environment too.

McAfee in 2009 came out with a report on Carbon Footprint of Spam which was an eye-opener for many people. The report reveals that apart from causing disturbances like bombarding your inbox and providing irrelevant information, spam email damages the environment and contributes to green house gas (GHG) emissions. As per the study, the annual energy wasted to create, store, view, and filter spam across eleven countries is as high as 33 bn kWh or 33 tWh. This is equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 mn homes, with the same green GHG emissions as 3.1 mn passenger cars using 2 bn gallons of gasoline! McColoa major source of online spamwas taken offline in late 2008, resulting in a 70 Per cent drop in global spam volume, and energy savings of 2.2 mn cars going off the road that day. The figures in the report are staggering!

Even though there are people who have criticized the report, its evident that there is nothing good about spams. It is entirely worthless, and it accounts for 85-97 Per cent of all email activities. It would be worth finding a solution to eradicate it.

Be Careful!
As users, we could be more careful about how we search the Internet, and where we leave our email ids, which will prevent them from being picked up by malware and result in less spams in our inboxes. We should also use spam-filtering and make sure that email providers have installed proper filters. There is a need to use a disposable email address for things that we want to sign up for, but will never need to use it again. Whenever we are forwarding emails, especially to a group of people, we should make sure that all the old email addresses are removed. Moreover, when we sign up for membership in a website, we should uncheck the check box which asks whether we want to receive ads and other emails. Last but not least, we should scan our PCs regularly, so that it is free from viruses and worms.

As computer usage continues to grow, scrutiny on the energy use of servers that power everything from Internet to banking services is increasing. This is where the battle against spam begins. The need of the hour is industry collaboration, prescriptive education, and research and development of spam filtering technologies and services which would save time as well as assist in reducing the carbon footprint. There are some innovative products that one can use in order to be safe from spams.

Microsoft forefront security for exchange server: integrates multiple scan engines from industry leading security firms into a comprehensive, layered solution, helping businesses to protect their Microsoft exchange server messaging environments from viruses, worms, spams, and inappropriate content. It is an on-premise solution that provides protection for Exchange 2007 Edge, Hub and Mailbox server roles

Network access protection (NAP): is a platform and solution that controls access to network resources based on a client computers identity and compliance with corporate governance policy. NAP allows network administrators to define granular levels of network access based on who a client is, the groups to which the client belongs, and the degree to which that client is compliant with corporate governance policy. If a client is not compliant, NAP provides a mechanism to automatically bring him/her back into compliance and then dynamically increase its level of network access

Sender ID: authenticates inbound email to help verify that it is from the person that it says it is from. The messages that have been authenticated by sender ID are less likely to be spams. To help distinguish between verifiable and unverifiable senders, sender ID checks and validates the senders email address against the senders Internet protocol (IP).

An increasing number of technology organizations have announced sender ID support by encouraging industry adoption, publishing their own sender records, or offering specific products and services that support the sender ID system, from email applications to anti-spam services.

SmartScreen: is an intelligent spam-filtering solution that is integrated across all Microsoft email platforms. The technology determines how to distinguish between legitimate email messages and spams by using extensive user input from hundreds of thousands of Windows Live Hotmail users. The result is that more legitimate emails reach you and upwards of 95 Per cent spams are blocked.

I agree that overall, spams form a small portion of the total ecological footprint of humans, but every small step is of help. Both the real and the e-environment are surely better off without it!

(The author is chief security officer, Microsoft India)