Subject: Ask anything you want... like "Why can't somebody do something about SPAM?"
Explanations
posted by ScottWright on Tuesday, July 15th 2008 @ 2:19 PM
This is probably one of the most common questions that get asked to an IT manager.
Of course, there are many answers to this question. The main reason SPAM is possible is because it was never envisioned to be a problem before millions of email servers were already deployed around the world.
Now that it's here, there are basically two approaches:
- Try to prevent SPAMMERS from successfully sending messages; and
- Try to block incoming messages that look like SPAM.
Neither approach works 100% of the time. The SPAMMERS are often using computers that are in remote, untouchable countries. Or, more often these days, they are using innocent citizens' computers without their knowledge. Groups of these computers are called BOTNETS. Because they are basically legitimate home computers that have not been secured properly, it's very hard to find them and shut them down.
As for blocking them, we all know how well SPAM filters are working in your inbox. They probably catch 80-90% of them. But those that get through are still irritating. The problem here is that there is no clear rule for a computer filter to decide how to identify a message as SPAM. Furthermore, as filtering technology gets better, SPAMMERS come up with more ways for their email to look "normal" to the filters.
Basically, SPAM will be around as long as it costs less to do than they can make from people opening and reading the messages. | 
