It’s been somewhat of a running joke in the email marketing community that the spam filtering companies don’t really have any incentive to “solve” the spam problem. After all, if they were to fix it, then they would be out of business!

In many ways, the spam filter companies could be compared to weapons manufacturers. Now, McAfee certainly isn’t as bad as Haliburton, in fact I think they are a good company that helps protect millions of people from spam and viruses. But like the weapons manufacturers don’t really want the wars to end, I don’t think the executives at McAfee are really interested in solving the spam problem.

This week BBC reported on the results of a study commissioned by McAfee to try and justify their perpetual existence. They came to the conclusion that you need a spam filter. “Surfing the web unprotected will leave the average web user with 70 spam messages each day.”

Wow, that was a striking conclusion. Who doesn’t have a spam filter? Every free email account, broadband email account, and most corporate email accounts have spam filters.

The BBC article ended with a quote that shows how self serving the whole thing was, “It is such an immense problem and it’s never going to go away. It’s no longer a question of solving it but one of managing it,” said Mr Dave De Walt, chief executive of McAfee.

Well Mr. De Walt, we haven’t given up yet.

Ever see an ad for emusic.com? It’s been in magazines and online — they always offer 50 free downloads to new users. Well apparently, you get free spam too!

Taking a look at their privacy policy, I see that they did provide notice that I would be contacted about “exciting offers” but somehow I doubt this is what they had in mind.

We may also use the information we collect about you to analyze Site usage, improve our content and product offerings, customize the Site’s content, layout, and services, update you about our products or services, or to contact you about exciting offers of new products or services that we believe may be of interest to you. You always have the option to receive fewer or no communications in the future from us by opting out. You may opt out by following the instructions included in the specific communication you no longer wish to receive or by sending an email at any time to service@emusic.com and explaining how you would like to modify your preferences.

–eMusic Privacy Policy

Unfortunately, the spam I received did not contain an unsubscribe link as they promised. I don’t think this company is affiliated with emusic.com, I think its more likely that emusic.com sold their list or it was compromised and is now in the hands of spammers.

The message below is just one example of many messages I’ve received as a direct result of signing up for the emusic.com service. The email address that this spam came to was only used once, to sign up for the emusic.com service. There is no chance that this address was typed in by mistake or automatically generated.

From bmoosa@singnet.com.sg  Tue May 6 11:28:48 2008
Return-Path: <bmoosa@singnet.com.sg>
X-Original-To: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Received: from comsmtp1.singnet.com.sg (comsmtp1.singnet.com.sg [165.21.101.74])
  by mail.otherinbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2972744248
  for <xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Tue,  6 May 2008 11:28:47 -0400 (EDT)

Received: from discus.singnet.com.sg (discus.singnet.com.sg [165.21.101.119])
  by comsmtp1.singnet.com.sg (8.14.1/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m46FRk8G019504;
  Tue, 6 May 2008 23:27:46 +0800

Received: from discus.singnet.com.sg (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
  by discus.singnet.com.sg (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id m46FRSZq006994;
  Tue, 6 May 2008 23:27:35 +0800

Received: (from cooluser@localhost)
  by discus.singnet.com.sg (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id m46FQiP9006384;
  Tue, 6 May 2008 23:26:44 +0800

X-Authentication-Warning: discus.singnet.com.sg: cooluser set
sender to bmoosa@singnet.com.sg using -f
To: winners@qelizabethfoundation.co.uk
Subject: Your E-mail Account Was Selected *****As A Winner*****
Message-ID: <1210087604.482078b48f96f@discus.singnet.com.sg>
Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 23:26:44 +0800 (SGT)
From: "Queen Elizabeth's Foundation 2008" <bmoosa@singnet.com.sg>
Reply-To: parkjonesdesk@hotmail.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
User-Agent: SingNet WebMail

>From : The Queen Elizabeth's Foundation
Woodlands Road
Leatherhead CourtLeatherhead
Surrey
KT22 0BN.

Attn: Beneficiary,

Congratulations The Queen Elizabeth's Foundation has chosen you by the board
of trustees as one of the final recipients of a cashGrant/Donation for your
own personal, educational, and business development. To celebrate the 30th
anniversary program, We are giving out a yearly donation of US$500,000.00
(Five Hundred Thousand United states Dollars) to 5  lucky recipients, as
charity donations/aid from the Queen Elizabeth's Foundation,Diana, EU,UNICEF
and the UNO in  accordance with the  enabling act of Parliament, which is part
of our promotion. To file for your  claim you are to fill out below information
and send it to Mr.Jones Park The Executive Secretary Via his email contact
address.

Claims Requirements:

# Full Name:..............................
# Address; ............................
# Nationality:...........................
# Age:.......... Date of
# Birth:.................
# Occupation:..........................
# Phone:..............Fax:................
# State of Origin:........Country:..........

The Executive Secretary:

Mr. Jones Park
Woodlands Road
Leatherhead CourtLeatherhead
Surrey KT22 0BN.
E-mail: parkjonesdesk@hotmail.com
Tel: +447031948277
**********************************************************************
Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People is a registered
charity No 251051.  Registered as a company limited by guarantee
in London No892013.

Registered at Leatherhead Court, Woodlands Road,
Leatherhead,Surrey KT22 0BN.
**********************************************************************

Why is there so much webmail? People have lots of reasons for using it, but one of the most popular reasons is as a “spam” email address they don’t check as frequently. It doesn’t take too long for this account to be full of junk mail. To find a message they want, they have to sift through tons of stuff they don’t want. Some people put up with it, and others get fed up and start over with a new webmail address. It’s not surprising that 17 percent of the US online population creates a new e-mail address every 6 months according to Jupiter Research.

While this may be common, its not much of a solution for spam. It doesn’t really solve anything, it just moves the junk from their primary email account into their webmail account.

Despite filters, tidal wave of spam bears down on e-mailers

A recent USA Today article highlights the fact that spam filters just don’t work and they never will. The best spam filters catch 99% of the spam but let about 1% through. And they incorrectly delete a few good messages that you really wanted to get — about 0.1% for the best of them.

It’s not surprising they have hit a brick wall. Think about what a spam filter is trying to do — it examines each message individually and decides if you want it or not. This is really hard! Some of the best spam filters actually use artificial intelligence techniques such as Bayesian filters to “learn” on a personal basis what you consider to be spam. But even they have a tough time telling the difference between a promotion to refinance my house and a news article about the recent credit crunch. And even the Bayesian filters can be tricked by spammers.

It is easy for a filter to stop a virus. Each virus has a “signature” and so the computer can be 100% sure it is a virus without any chance of a mistake. No one wants to get a virus email so the computer can block the email. Even an email from your mom that’s got a virus should be blocked!

But lots of other email messages aren’t so easy to figure out. An email that some people think is spam other people actually find interesting. It’s hard to believe, but the reason why mortgage refinances, prescription drugs and get-rich-quick home businesses are so commonly found in spam email is because lots of people click on those email messages and purchase those products. Until the spam filter can read your mind, it will never really know for sure which message you want and which message to trash.

In the end, there is almost nothing that a spam filter can count on as reliable. Spammers change everything up to trick the filters. They insert hidden text (sometimes Shakespeare, sometimes random text) to throw off the Bayesian filters. They constantly change the From address, domain name and IP addresses so that it’s futile to try and keep up with which ones to block.

Of course, spam filters don’t do anything to discourage spammers. They actually encourage spammers to send more spam. Some spam always gets through the spam filters, so the spammer sends more, then more spam will get through.

There must be a better way to handle this.

Not surprising that Spam Filters was listed as one of “The Things That Suck” in this Wired Magazine Culture Review. Brendan does a decent job of boiling down the problems, although fails to mention the problem where the spam filter incorrectly hides something you wanted to get! This is called a “false positive” by email marketers and can be very frustrating.