This is an article taken from the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email reguarding the current spam problems. It should be noted that this individual is not associated with California.com.

From: Wm James <wrjames.remove@spamreaper.org>
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email
Subject: Re: Thank the spammers - update
Date: 11 Mar 2003 13:42:28 -0600
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Final version with the help of a bunch of people here. Typos
corrected, and I added a couple of paragraphs. I want to thank
everyone for the kind words and assistance.

===============================================================

Thank the Spammers

Oddly enough, I remember a time when closing a relay was considered
extremely rude. In the early days of the Internet, everyone who
connected to it took some responsibility in helping to ensure that all
the Internet's traffic was routed to its destination. Some places had
better connections than others and some connections were unavailable
at times for various reasons. So part of connecting your machine to
the network was sharing the load and donating little bits of bandwidth
here and there so the Internet ran smoothly for everyone. Relays were
important because sometimes a user's home server was unavailable.
Then came the spammers. Because they abused the relays, like they
abuse everything else, the relays had to be turned off. They found
that they could abuse the relays and cost others hundreds or even
thousands of dollars, but it prevented them from losing the $10 dialup
account or free NetZero account. It's like a thief who steals a $1000
wedding ring with priceless sentimental value just to sell it for a
$20 cocaine fix. Old software which ran perfectly well had to be
replaced just to close the hole which was so important to leave open
before. Yeah, thank the spammers for that.

But that's not the only thing the spammers have ruined. Free ISPs were
growing. These services weren't perfect, they came with ads which were
intentionally in the way, but that paid for the service, so it was OK.
Over all, NetZero's service was actually pretty good even if it did
have that open window in the way. But spammers learned that they could
abuse those too, and their mind-set is "abuse it quickly before it
goes away" knowing that the abuse is what will make it go away. But
each spammer wants to be the one to milk it dry before the next
spammer does, and all of them combined make it useless. Thanks,
spammers, thanks a lot.

Try querying any database which has email addresses anywhere in it.
They have to either make it pay only, or make you type in something
associated with an image before you can retrieve data. Why? Because
spammers found out there were valid email addresses in them and
started hammering the servers with automated software, grabbing the
entire database, using up all the bandwidth 1000 times over, just to
harvest a handful of addresses from it to abuse as well. So to defend
themselves and keep their servers from crashing, database owners had
to make it impossible to query automatically. Thank the spammers.

And let's not forget Usenet. Munging addresses was once considered
blatant abuse. Now very few people post with a valid address. If you
want to discuss something off-line or off-topic with a poster, you
either can't do it via email or you have to manually "decode" and type
in their address. Thank spammers for that too.

The spammers claim to be running legitimate businesses, but legitimate
businesses who ask for email addresses when you download their product
get 99.9% garbage addresses now. Sign up for anything online and you
have to use an email address which you don't expect to keep. The trust
is rightfully gone. Again, that's something else for which you can
thank spammers.

If you happen to run an authentic, legitimate business, you can't even
post your own email address on your web site anymore. If you do, any
addresses you publish for use by customers are instead harvested and
added to thousands of spammers' lists. They become no longer usable in
a very short time. So even though it may mean fewer orders, and the
customer has to type more and may lose trust in your business because
you can't give them an email address, you have to use contact forms
and hide your address. Thanks, spammers.

And what about those contact forms? They are also targets for abuse by
spammers. Spammers go to a lot of trouble to find web forms with
security holes they can exploit so they can send their spam through
your server. You pay for the bandwidth. You get blocked. You maybe
even lose your web hosting. But the spammer got a million spams
through before it was knocked down, so never mind the cost. It was
"free" just like the spamming ads say. Thank the spammers for that
too.

How about dialup pools? Many ISPs use them. You might be using
BellSouth, Earthlink, NetZero, Tekplex or any one of the others and
dialing into the same pool of modems. One spammer might abuse that so
much that others have to deny emails from the pool just to protect
their systems. But the spammer got his unsolicited and unwanted
garbage sent out while it lasted, so he's happy even if everyone else
is now having problems in his wake. Thank the spammers for that one as
well.

If you email from a server with a dialup connection, much of the world
will not accept your email even if neither your server nor any other
server in your network block has ever been used for spamming. But it's
impossible to know in advance that it won't be, so ISPs almost never
allow mail servers on dialups. So no matter how legitimate, you can't
operate a mail server without a permanent connection. Thanks,
spammers.

AOL announced a few days ago that they finally hit the "one billion
emails rejected" mark. In one day they dumped over a billion spams
from their servers. And that doesn't include the spams which got
through to their customers. AOL estimates that something like $5 per
month of each user's fee goes to pay the costs of handling the
bandwidth and other associated costs of handling all the spam. Gee
thanks, spammers!

And what of freedom? It's becoming less and less acceptable to use
anything online without constant monitoring by someone, be it an ISP,
a government agency, or merely a librarian. If you want to use a
computer online, you have to ID yourself. Your actions have to
monitored to an increasing degree. Will the day come when government
reads all your email and decides your rights online? Perhaps. When
that day comes, thank the spammers for it.

And you wonder why I fight the spammers? I wonder why you don't. Not
necessarily you specifically, but the millions of users of the
Internet. If only 2% fought them hard, if only 10% of the ISPs blocked
ALL traffic to and from spam friendly hosts (not just email, but web
pages too, for example), the spammers would have no one willing to
connect them. So why isn't that happening? Have people become such
sheep that they just accept abuse and the concept that ruination is
the natural path? Or are too many people just too lazy to become
involved? I'm not sure. Whatever the cause, there will always be
spammers and similar thieves looking for a quick buck, and
unscrupulous ISPs willing to cater to them while they abuse if they
can get away with it. But when email is no longer usable, when people
have to go back to long distance telephone bills or carrier pigeon,
thank the spammers.

Then again, thank those who were willing to do business with the
spammers, buy their products, sell them connectivity, and host their
web pages. Also, thank those who looked the other way and continued
doing business with the ISPs who harbored the spammers. Is that you?
If so, thanks. Thanks a lot. I hope whatever you got from it was worth
it.

William R. James
March 8, 2003

================================================================

That started as a letter to my daughter after she had discovered her
email was bouncing due to an open relay on her ISP's network. After
some explaining and discussion, I wrote it in attempt to explain the
scope of the damage spammers and their supportes have done and
continue to do to the internet. She replied partly with the
following, posted with her permission. In case you
aren't familiar with "relay" in the context used, it is a system which
is used by the hearing impaired allowing them to use a telephone. The
deaf person uses a terminal with the relay service. The person working
the relay translated between voice and text between the deaf caller
and the party on the other end.

>====================================================================
>
>When I was working in relay, I relayed a call from some poor
>little old deaf lady who didn't understand why she couldn't get into
>her AOL account anymore. The call was to AOL customer service, who
>(aside from the folks at Social Security) are the LEAST helpful,
>rudest people on the planet. Apparently somebody had hacked into her
>email account and sent 500 spam emails on three separate occasions in
>one day, so AOL shut down the account. She didn't understand what was
>going on, she kept insisting she hadn't been online in a week and she
>hadn't sent the emails, and AOL was basically telling her to stuff it.
>
>So now you've got some little old deaf lady who just wants to IM her
>grandkids so she doesn't have to talk to them through a relay
>operator, and she can't do it because some jerk decided sending 1500
>unsolicited emails was more important. I'm starting to understand why
>this ticks you off so much.
>
>====================================================================

Thanks all, for tolorating my rant.

William R. James