Spamtime
by Peter J. Sumner
It's been a slow month. I've only won 7.6 billion Dollars and 213 of my close relatives have died in Nigeria. Maybe I need some Viagra afterall! You know the feeling? Yes, we are being spammed off the Internet. Well, not just spam, but phishing in most cases. That's attempted identity theft in Internet jargon. Who the hell would want to be me?
If you get the feeling that reading your email is becoming a chore rather than a rewarding experience, you are not alone. It is just one example of how the Internet is being slowly destroyed by mindless people. It would be easy to dismiss this by simply admitting that there are a huge number of idiots around and we are intelligent enough not to fall for their stupidity. And, if we are led to believe that the Americans are a nation of drug addicts with severely reduced reproductive capacity, then they only have themselves to blame. Anyway, these emails aren't doing us any real harm, they are just annoying. But that simply isn't true! We are being affected by this in many subtle ways.
Each one of these emails doesn't come personally directed to you. You are just one unfortunate target out of thousands, and sometimes millions, of email addresses collected, traded and often sold just for the purpose of mass mailing. The most incredibly stupid aspect is that most of these mails don't have a valid return address. The result is that even the sender has no possibility of gaining anything out of these scams. Why anyone would send out millions of emails knowing full well that he/she cannot receive a reply is surely a topic for psychiatrists to ponder over.
There is a temptation to classify Nigerians as the dumbest people in the world, but that isn't so. Most of these emails originate from the USA, with just a few from the UK and other countries. We know this from the wording or phraseology used in the content. Tracing the origin of the actual server used is an impossibility, not only because this is purposely disguised, but also because the whole world uses American and British servers. This site is hosted on an American server! Unfortunately, there are many otherwise sane people who are led to believe that they can eliminate this menace, thus contributing to the overall stupidity. Prime examples of this are Yahoo and Hotmail among others. They think that by blocking IP addresses of known spammers, they can somehow resolve the problem. They are, in fact, helping to destroy the Internet.
IP addresses are the key to the problem. The original Internet used these IP addresses to identify the computers on a network. Nowadays, the Internet has long outgrown this simple regime. Since many years, a single IP address no longer identifies one computer but hundreds of computers, and if that address is assigned to a router, then thousands of computers!
Instead, we now use namebased identification throughout the DNS system. For example, there are hundreds of websites using this particular IP address, but there is only one www.krelay.com; and in the same way, the IP address currently assigned to your computer does not identify you personally, but only identifies your ISP by name. Therefore, you can understand that by using the IP address alone, there is absolutely no possibility of identifying any particular computer used for sending out spam. Although ISP's are required to keep logs, and could theoretically identify an individual user, this doesn't apply to Internet Cafes which are so popular throughout the world.
And yet, many American companies, whose sole business is conducted on the Internet, choose to ignore this and indiscriminately censor whole blocks of IP addresses, often to the extent of cutting off entire countries! Since PTCL has total control of our Internet access, you only need to block a few of their addresses and the whole of Pakistan is off limits. This isn't just talk, it does happen! (PTCL is identified as pie.net on traceroute listings.)
Pakistanis do their share of spamming too - we are not innocent! However, more often than not, Pakistani owned servers are targeted by spammers for their outgoing mails. As I said earlier, it is impossible to trace a server since spammers don't use their own, but other people's servers. Pakistanis, along with other Asians, often don't have complete knowledge of setting up their servers securely, leaving mailing systems open for use by anyone who comes across it. Spammers exploit this knowing that with a possible 12 hour time difference, the real owner is not going to notice unusual activity for some considerable time, or at all.
There is a system, IPv6, which is supposed to be the cure for all our problems. This system gives enough available addresses that every person in the world could have their own personal address. But where is it? Apart from a few isolated places, mostly in the UK it seems, there is no sign of it being widely used. Like so many systems on the Internet, it hasn't been implemented. Just as "Multicast", a brilliant idea which has never become workable, exists in a few isolated pockets only.
IPv6 isn't an answer to spam, but with a few slight adjustments it could be just that. As with bank cards, there could be a public identification number, and a second private number to identify each individual using the Internet. Or, routers could be programmed to only pass data in the geographically correct direction, for example, a user known to be in Karachi could not use proxy servers to originate email from London! There are methods already in existence to carry out both of these suggestions, they just need to be combined and refined.
Just how any such changes are to be carried out is an intriguing question. Who controls the Internet has always been an unanswered question. The fact is that Governments must enforce any new rulings and the assignment of individual identification numbers. They already monitor your Internet usage through their various intelligence agencies. With the right methods, Governments of the world could actually save a lot of time and resources, since with a unique identification number for each individual, there would be no need for additional tax, social security, or driving license numbers and so forth. The individual would also benefit by having just one identity which is truly international. Now you may be thinking that this is a situation straight out of a George Orwell novel. Well '1984' has come and gone, and like it or not, we don't have any privacy on the Internet as it is. Whatever changes are made can only be for the better.
I believe that the damage done to the Internet by spam, virus, trojans and spyware is too great to be repaired successfully. We need a brand new Internet or several if possible. Many of the problems are directly caused by Microsoft Windows due to its inherent insecurity, poor design, and Microsoft's refusal to follow any kind of standard. The way that Microsoft introduces its own standards, then refuses to disclose any information that would allow others to even understand them or implement them, means that Microsoft will always be an outsider. As such, Microsoft should construct their own Internet - and they certainly can afford to do so! That would leave the saner elements free to construct a safe Internet for the professional users.
Now back to the email.
Dear Mr. Begum, - huh?