I want to share my biggest concern that impacts the conduct of legitimate online usage. My job is helping companies be more successful applying technology to their business. Since I work with so many clients I get to see so many of the issues with the modern Net up close and personal. The issue I want to address is unsolicited commercial email (or Spam), and offer MY SOLUTION. You may have a different view and I encourage you to post it here to share with others. Problem: SPAM, or unsolicited commercial email (UCE). The cost of sending email is so minimal there is little to prevent abuse. As an ISP I have to maintain both virus filters and spam filters to prevent my clients email boxes from being jammed full of crud. These filters in turn have to be set so aggressively that periodically a legitimate message gets rejected. For example, last month I found messages from my travel agent, my financial advisor and a physician in my junk folder because they match a pattern similar to spam. The other issue I have is the vast amounts of pornographic UCE messages. Fortunately, most get caught by the filters, but I was recently helping one of my kids with their email and when we dropped into their junk folder it was like we had unwittingly entered a red light district. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 legislated that pornographic UCE had to comply with certain standards, which have largely been ignored. I don't like the idea that my children or I are unwittingly confronted with pornography in the confines of our own home. My Solution: Eliminate anonymity online. The only reason people perform this obnoxious behavior is because there are no consequences. Sites like Paypal, and Ebay require you to verify who you are with credit cards and enforce good conduct through feedback from other users. Some may argue this is giving up their right to privacy, but the fact is every time you go online, your IP address is available (just like your cell phone location can be picked up through towers even if you aren't making a call), so anyone who wants to can easily track you down. I would gladly exchange a limited amount of privacy if it would clean up the unruly nature of the Net. In fact, the European Union  is proposing to make it a crime to falsify information when you open an email account (see the following article), thus eliminating a certain degree of privacy. Their primary concern is fighting terror and crime. For those who do not want to give up their personal information, creating an unmanaged Net will let them surf porn and exchange viruses in privacy. In summary, I am concerned that the Internet is rapidly becoming such a problematic arena that the energy we put into thwarting the bad apples is cutting into our bottom line. Unsolicited email is rapidly undermining our ability to conduct business through this vital channel. There simply is little or no reason for spammers to stop because of the anonymity of the Net. Unless we can encourage people to give up some of their personal information in order to validate who they are the problem will only get worse and all the Spam filters in the word won't stop the avalanche. From: Comment: Stein Swenson Thursday, December 27, 2007 I hate SPAM as well. chuck arnold Thursday, October 25, 2007 Our issue is that we have to send out mass emails to those that have opted in on our email list. We rely on communicating with clients this way. Our mail now often gets block by filters. Michael suggested that I start sending mail without image and not in HTML. So, I've changed the settings for my email client and we'll see how it goes. Alexander Aginsky Saturday, April 07, 2007 After speaking to Michael about my issue with SPAM and how it was draining so much of my time and resources, he provided me with a solution, which our firm has since implemented. Since then, about 97% of all of our SPAM has been eliminated. Although the system took some getting used to at first, it has been very good at meeting our objectives. The SPAM is no longer coming in and 99% of all desired mail is actually coming through. Based on the system’s self-learning capabilities, after about a month or so, both percentages (meaning the system’s ability to recognize real innocent mail and elimination of actual SPAM) will get to 100%. I would strongly recommend this solution for other large and small organizations alike. Thank you Michael for your assistance in this matter. Alexander Aginsky Managing Director Aginsky Consulting Group, LLC. www.aginskyconsulting.com Alexander Aginsky Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Michael, So what would you say are the top three anti-spam solutions currently available out there? I receive literally hundreds of spam messages daily, not counting those going into the junk mail folder and end up spending too much of my valuable time going through and figuring out which messages to delete. What methods do you utilize to combat this problem? Dale Williams Thursday, March 15, 2007 Anonymity and Liberty go hand-in-hand; giving up much of either means dramatic changes to one's life! Such changes can be devastating and unacceptable choices. But the real problem with the anonymity approach is in assuming that a lack of privacy will thwart the spammers and cyber threatist's actions. My Company is in the eMessage processing business, we protect you 24x7 from these sorts of intrusions and attacks, and in my experience these folks are very smart and innovative. We see them adapting their attack and penetration activities every few hours. Many use faux-sites that appear legitimate to garner personal information and steal your identity. Removing privacy only opens new vistas for them by which they can learn more quickly that which they are after in the first place. Over the last 12 months, a 100,000%+ increase in “Blended Threats” have exploded on the cyber communicating community. A Blended Threat attack is one that arrives as spam, infects with a Worm, Bot and/or virus and then takes control of your lap top or desk top system and all its’ contents. Even if quarantined in a junk folder on you system, it is still inside your network and able to be executed, sometimes accidentally or sometimes self activating upon a calendar date in the future unless deleted daily by the user. The now famous “$50 Rolex” spam is typical of a blended threat which, when clicking on the “Hot Link” to get more info or make a purchase, takes you to a site which delivers the Bot and keyboard logger to your system. This is a very sophisticated approach to stealing your personal info. It would must less complicated to set up a multitude of sites with phony but legitimate looking, certified/registered, info on the site’s owner. Then when an exchange of info occurs, your legit data for their phony data, suddenly the connection is mysteriously terminated. Your system is compromised and their’s shuts down 12 hours later and disappears forever. The Euro registration approach is flawed because most of the attack spam comes from countries outside of Europe; Russia, Brazil, Korea and the USA all have very active spammer and cyber threat communities. They are not going to be deterred by Euro laws. And, as you noted, given the European’s nature, it’s unlikely to be passed in there. Even though terrorists created the need for the Patriot Act in this country, not everyone agrees with the Act. Privacy still has its virtue. Blocking threats before they enter your network has even more benefits; being able to train your own individual eMessage processing preferences is the best way to avoid receiving unwanted and unsolicited spam and the associated attack vectors embodied therein. This is the best practices and most effective solution to the deluge of spam that permeates the eMail and Instant Messaging world we live in and conduct business in today. Anna Saturday, March 10, 2007 Hello, Michael. I totally agree with you that Spam is an overwhelming thorn in our email boxes. Not only are many of the messages profane, but the time involved managing the process is frustrating to business owners like myself. I do occasionally delete an important message from a business associate in my haste to clean up my mailbox. I agree with your solution to eliminate anonymity. Many of us depend on the net for our livelihood and these masked maraders are allowed to continue with unethical and unsavory behavior.. Anna Michele Thursday, March 08, 2007 While I really do not mind giving up personal information, I do not think it is necessary. I must be one of the few people in the world that is not bothered by spam. I guess I am my own filter because I too have found spam in my inbox folder and real messages in my spam folder. Every morning my inbox has about 50 spam messages in it and it takes me about 30 seconds to delete them. To me it is extremely easy to read the from and subject line while I am deleting each message one by one. With the preview window, you really do not see the porn before it is deleted. There is really no need to open each message before it is deleted. So in conclusion; I would not be opposed to some solution involving less anonymity online but I do not see a huge problem with spam. michael curry Friday, February 23, 2007 As an aside to this article, I recently discovered spammers were posting junk to my Blogs. In one night, a program posted over 80 comments, mostly Viagra ads. So I spent 1/2 a day today implementing a CAPTCHA solution to differentiate between a human trying to post comments versus a computer program. Here's what it looks like. Before you can submit your comment to the Blog you have to type in the text you see in the image. A human can easily read the text, but a computer program will not be able to do so. Like I said, it is a never ending battle staying on top of the cyber jerks.