uce@ftc.gov won't get rid of the spam but they will know that you don't want it. I have a scanner but not sure how to scan this message but here is what the article in the paper reads: I know it is long and the article was in the Dominion Post, Morgantown, WV, Sunday, February 16, 2003. These are not my words, Ruby Casto. SPAN IS OUT OF CONTROL: Despite efforts to block it, by Jeff Gelles. Is the wall near my computer screen papered with canaries from the Internet mine shaft? I ask that question because it's covered with printouts of spam-unsolicitd commercial e-mails. Or at least I think it's spam. I can't actually read most of it, because the e-mails I've pinned to the wall are entirely in Chinese and Korean. I get plenty of spam in English, too, just like virtually anyone with an e-mail address. But the foreign-language spam raises an especially troubling question. If there are automated processors out there---"bots" in geek-speak, short for "robots" ---that are harvesting e-mail addresses and generating spam without human intervention and even without regard to whether it's intelligible to the recipient, could spam eventually grow so large that it chokes off the entire global network? Spam may not be growing at geometric proportions yet, but it's clearly out of control, despite efforts to block it. Brightmail Inc, a San Francisco developer of anti-spam technology, says spam now accouts for 36 percent of the e-mail received at the 150 million e-mail addresses it helps protect. That's up from just 8 percent a year ago. We filter billions of e-mail messages a month, says Brightmail marketing manager Linda Smith Munyan, who says her personal account would amass 100 spams a day but for her company's filters which she says are 85 to 90 percent effective. The filters work in various ways, but akey tool is Brightmail's "probe network", which Munyan says uses decoy addresses to identify spam attacks without blocking legitimate e-mails. If the decoy accounts get any e-mails at all, it's suspicious, Munyan says, though it could reflect an honest error in addressing. But if it's coming into thousands of these accounts that we've set up, that's not a typo, it's an attack. The growth of spam attacks is staggering. From July 2001 to July 2002, they grew fivefold, from one million to five million per month. A single attack can contain thousands of e-mails. Brightmail's technology is used by major corporations and leadidng Internet service providers, including Earthlink, ATT Worldnet, Verizon Online and Comcast. But if your inbox looks anything like mine, it's clearly an imperfect solution. Should government take a more aggressive approach? That step was urged last week in a petition filed with the Federal Trade Commission by three consumer groups. So far the FTC has focused on collecting examples of spam --it gets about 40,000 a day--and on pursuing individual cases against spammers for deceptive and misleading practices, such as including a bogus "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of an e-mail and using it to identify active e-mail addresses. In other, words, you ask for less spam and you get more. The consumer groups want the FTC to set clear standards for e-mail, including a rule that defines spam and deceptive and therefore unlawful. Misrepresents the sender, subject or content of the e-mail. Fails to provide reliable contact information or a reliable opt-out system. Is sent to an individual who has opted out or resigned from a senders list. "We think it's very important to have a line drawn in the sand----to make it clear to marketers what's permitted and what's not permitted, and to give consumers the same clarity, so that they can complain when they've been abused." says Ken McEldowney, executive director of Consumer Action, one of the groups urging the FTC to act. A line in the virtual sand isn't a bad idea, though it's not clear how effective such rules can be, especially with so much spam originating overseas. But there's no question that something needs to be done, or this wonderful tool called e-mail will get choked off by spam. The consumer groups' Web site is http://www.banthespam.com. To comment to the FTC on their petition, call (877)382-4357 (press 1). To forward spam to the FTC send it to uce@ftc.gov [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]