Anti-Spam

Is spam a problem that will not go away? In some cases, spam is becoming overwhelming; one HK company recently received about 140,000 junk emails in just one week. It is also a growing global problem, the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) published statistics in January 2003 showing that over 51% of user's emails were Spam and in the U.K., the managed service provider MessageLabs reported that Spam grew from 2.5% in June 2002 to 55% in June 2003.

Spam can be simply defined as junk electronic messages, but this does not explain why it is becoming so serious that special legislation is required to control it. The key to understanding the economics of spam is that the cost of many forms of electronic message is extremely small, so even a very small response rate can result in substantial profits. Compared to traditional mail marketing, there are no paper or printing costs.

Solutions

Many approaches, both technological and legal, have been proposed to fight spam, but effective control can only be achieved by combining them: the laws define what is acceptable, and the technology enables the action. Education also has an important role - an interesting Australian campaign, titled "Don't Buy, Don't Try, Don't Reply" targets the financial payback to spammers - if the response rate can be reduced sufficiently, spamming becomes uneconomic.

Yui Kee Computing does not provide laws, please contact your Government for new laws. We do provide technology:

Sophos Puremessage

Our Chief Consultant, Allan Dyer has written some articles on spam:

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