Unsolicited emails (spam)

Known as „spam” or „junk emails”, the unsolicited mails usually have a commercial or irrelevant content and they are sent in large quantities to a lot of recipients. The unsolicited mails are a controversial subject to the Courts of Justice, it is rather a problem of consent then content: they are called „unsolicited mails (spam)” for the simple reason their recipient had not solicited them.

Besides emails there were developed new ways of atac: instant messaging („spim”), forum messages, Short Messaging Service (sms) or the pretence to offer optimising services to the search metods on Internet (spamdexing).

In general the sender of unsolicited mails hide or mask his identity, but it is not a rule. In past the main reason of the messages was to bomb the newsgroups or discussion lists with useless or inadequate mails, meanwhile they diversified to many forms, but the most known form is the comercial communications. The intention of the mesages is to convince the persons from the list to by products and services more or less legitimate.

The most known types of unsolicited mails are:

• The promotion and sell of products and services;
• The gathering of confidential informations as passwords, bank accounts, etc.
• Through online lotteries, bank frauds or humanitarian messages;
• The promotion of concepts and ideologies;
• Steal of identity and fraud.

Usually the spam authors offer their services to the companies or persons that search a cheaper way to promote their products: they sell the databases with lists of email addresses (hundreds or thounsands of addresses) or the complete service (data collecting, the projection of the dispatch channel of the messages to avoid the detection of the source, sending the messages).

The email addresses are being gathered through various ways:

• Harvesting (the use of search software for email addresses in public zones, on web pages or on unprotected mail servers);
• Flooding or dictionary spamming (automatic generation of accounts of some domains);
• e-pending (the search of valid emails for some persons or criterias);
• Usenet posting (trimiterea cãtre newsgroup-uri);
• Subscribing discussion lists to get acces to the list of all available addresses;
• The access of users' contact agendas or personal data using „malware” software;
• Spying the net traffic;
• The circumvention of databases with informations;
• Using the viruses that record the data filled in by the users in the forms online.

Efects of sending spam:

Usually there are several system passed over by the spam until they reach their destination to hide the real sender. Starting from this there are the following negative efects (there are, actually, a huge number of unsolicited emails sent daily all overt the world).

• Internet Service Providers (ISP) confronts with serious problems of cots and opeation, as processing time and speed, costs for bandwidth;
• The companies and the users must apply lists or schemes to filter the messages that incease the volume of informations in the system by processing and storing larger quantities of data;
• Delivering the messages and surfing the internet are slowed down considerably;
• The viral spam are spreading „malware” and evade confidentail data;
• A busy email address is a stress factor for any user, emptying it consuming time and resource that can be used productive.

Ways to avoid spam:

• Use antivirus and antispam software always updated;
• Update regularly the operating system and the most recent applications to corect the errors (the patches), especially when it is about Windows operating systems;
• Always check the autenticity of the sender of the mail and use digital signature;
• Apply content filters, heuristic rules, baysian filters, graylists;
• Do not open suspect messages;
• Do not answer and do not send further spam;
• Do not use unsubscribe instructions from this kind of messages;
• Ignore the messages that claim „you have solicited” something or that you have tried to send a message and you have got a „send error”;
• Use different email addresses and different names when you are subscribing to newsgroups or discussion lists or chat rooms;
• Mask the email address (for example using a string to the name of the domain.

Legal frame

The European Comittee created a juridic frame to ensure the free traffic of information technology services between the member states, and the legislative measures are limited to the minimum necessary to reach the objective of good operation of internal market. Until now the European Comittee did not choose one of the systems described earlier, the member states being free to chose. However it is being studied the adoption of the opt-in system as unic system at european level for the delivering through emails for comercial communications.

The National Autority for Settlement in Comunication and Information Technology (NASCIT) got specific prerogatives in information technology area, including about the application of the disposition of the Law no. 365/2002 with the article 3 paragraph 3, point 2 from the Rule of organization and operation of The National Autority for Settlement in Comunication and Information Technology, approved in the Decision of the Goverment no. 415/2007, regulations consentaneous to NASCIT „supervises and controls the observances of the legal purviews in the area of e-commerce, exercised as autority of settlement conformability with the purviews of the Law no. 365/2002 about the e-commerce, republished” (http://www.anrcti.ro/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=3034).

It is said that it does not get spring with one flower. This days NASCIT got us as a present an entire bouquet enforcing another eight penalties for unsolicited commercial communications throught electronic mail and a penalty of not providing informatins (http://www.anrcti.ro/desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=3183). There were penalized, chronologically by enforcing penalties: S.C. Managementproiect S.R.L. from Tîrgu-Jiu, S.C. Curtea Veche Publishing S.R.L. from Bucharest, S.C. Elitech Mit S.R.L. from Olteniþa, S.C. E-Student Consult S.R.L. from Bucharest, S.C. Chris&Chris Solutions Co S.R.L. from Bucharest, S.C. Ghizbi S.R.L. from Bucharest and two persons from Bucharest. Also, because it did not provide the solicited informations by NASCIT, S.C. Westfloor Profesional S.R.L. from Bucharest was sanctioned with a penalty of 1.000 lei.

The term spam appeared first in the discussion grups USENET mentioning EMP (Excessive Multi Posting) and ECP (Excessive Cross Posting). Today it is used to describe UBE (Unsolicited Bulk E-mail) and UCE (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail). The name spam is derived from a humoristic sketch of British grup Monty Python, there all the food in a menu from a coffee house included „spam”, a snack of pig meat. At some point a client asks the waiter if he has something that does not contain „spam”, the waiter lists him again the menu full of „spam”. At final a vikings chorus join singing „spam, spam, wondeful spam, glorious spam”, covering all conversation.

What it will be next remains to be seen. For an informative article about unsolicited mails what I have written until now is enough.