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Sunday, August 04, 2002

By Jim Krane, The Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Tom Cowles, who heads one of the world's largest bulk e-mail, or spam, businesses, ought to be a happy guy.

By his account, his company makes $12 million a year e-mailing billions of advertisements, mainly to folks who don't want them.

It's an easy job, the way Cowles and others describe it:

You get hired by a client who wants to sell a penile enlarger or an antenna booster. You write a zesty sales pitch. Then, with the help of some cloak-and-dagger software and a massive database of e-mail addresses, you deluge the planet.

If one in a thousand recipients buys it, you're rich.

But Tom Cowles is not a happy guy.

	Defense tips against spam Tips from the Federal Trade Commission on battling spam: Avoid displaying your e-mail address in public, including in newsgroups, chat rooms, Web sites and membership directories of online services. Check a Web site's privacy policy before submitting your address. The policy may allow the company to share your address with third parties. Consider opting out of this provision or not submitting your address at all. Consider using two e-mail addresses -- one for personal messages, one for newsgroups and chat rooms. Choose a unique e-mail address. A common name such as "jdoe" may get more spam than something like "jd51x02oe," though the unique address may be more difficult to remember. Use an e-mail filter. Many service providers offer free tools to filter out spam or channel it into a bulk e-mail folder. Others are available for purchase. Report spam to the Federal Trade Commission by sending the entire message, including the full header, touce@ftc.gov. Complain to your Internet service provider's abuse desk and to the sender's ISP. Be wary. Don't believe promises from strangers. Be skeptical of moneymaking opportunities.

Relentless anti-spam vigilantes have hounded the 35-year-old head of Empire Towers Inc., plastering Cowles' home address and phone number all over the Web. Spam recipients call to tell Cowles how they feel.

"These people will go to the lowest depths," said Cowles, of Bowling Green, Ohio. "I have some phone clips that would make you sick."

Cowles isn't the only hunted spammer. Many others' personal details are listed on anti-spam Web sites such as Spamhaus.org, which seek to shame bulk e-mailers into amending their zealous marketing ways.

Cowles is also the target of a stalker who has created a Web site larded with pictures of his home, his driving record and a pair of police mug shots from non-spam-related arrests.

"We had to go to a prosecutor to stop this woman from following my wife and taking pictures of her," Cowles said.

While most spam-related attention fixates on the frustrations of avoiding unwanted e-mail, the entrepreneurs causing those frustrations, like Cowles, also have a story to tell.

The so-called spam kings paint themselves as the Robin Hoods of American capitalism, tilting the Internet's sales power away from big corporations that can afford fancy ad campaigns toward the little guy tinkering in his basement.

"This is what the Internet is supposed to be," said Michael Jay, whose Houston-based company, America Find, sends a couple of million messages per day advertising $99 background checks. "This is free enterprise at its finest."

Spam, after all, is perfectly legal in most places -- as long as it isn't fraudulent.

Spammers say the combination of anonymity, volume and extremely low cost makes it worthwhile.

"It's the marketing medium of the future. You can't get around it," said Cowles, whose MassiveFX e-mailing software allows a client to send a billion or so messages per month.

Products vary from insurance to fake diplomas to pornography videos sold by pitches that would make a stevedore blush.

Legally speaking, sending a 7-year-old an e-mail advertising hardcore pornography might be a nuisance, but it's not a crime, said Timothy Healy, chief of the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center, based in Fairmont, W.Va.

Because of their success, Cowles and Jay are among dozens of spammers profiled on the Spamhaus site. They and their associates on the site are responsible for about 90 percent of the spam received in North America, said Steve Linford, director of the London-based Spamhaus Project.

"These are organized spam gangs who've been at it for years," Linford said.

To get started, a budding spammer needs a few CDs with millions of e-mail addresses, perhaps a list of foreign Internet servers that can be used to relay messages and a "spamware" mailing program. These cost $2,000 to $5,000 and are equipped with cloaking features that help spam evade blocking filters.

To stay ahead of vigilantes and filtering software, spammers constantly develop countermeasures.

Spammers hide by using fake "from" addresses and relaying their messages through anonymous mail servers in places like China.

On one matter, however, spammers and their nemeses agree: the United States needs a federal spam law.

Linford believes a U.S. law would limit recipients to those who agree to receive spam.

"It'll stop 90 percent of the problem, and we'll be left with a smaller hard-core group," Linford said. "We can tackle them."