Priority Interrupt by Steve Ciarcia Internet Infamy

I recently read an interesting observation. It said that all the spam attacks lately are good for the Internet because it spurs business growth in anti-spam technology and keeps everyone on a system upgrade path that is ultimately good for both hardware and software manufacturers. When I read warped logic like this, I cannot help but think of the same lame "trickle-down argument" from Indian gambling lobbyists who think that because casinos employ lots of people they shouldn’t have to pay taxes. But don’t get me started on that.

Spam and virus attacks are an outrageous nuisance that without remedial intervention could ultimately deep-six one of the few remaining free-enterprise zones on the planet. The growth of the Internet has been driven by commerce and communication. These days, could you really live without e-mail or the ability to get your hands on vast quantities of information on virtually any subject with the click of a key? The future vitality of the Internet depends on the unfettered interaction of legitimate users and sources, both commercial and private.

How anxious are you to continue ordering products online when you have to worry that your credit card number might be hacked by someone sitting in the same Wi-Fi-enabled coffee shop or, worse yet, that you actually entered all of your credit information in a fraudulent "phisher" site that exactly mimics a legitimate e-commerce site? Antivirus utilities and spam filters attack only part of the problem these days.

Statistics suggest that 30% of the e-mail on the Internet is spam, up from 10% a couple of years ago. I cannot speak for you, but fully 95% of my e-mail is spam. That is, unless it is the result of some virus attack and it goes even higher. I remember a recent two-day span when all we saw around our place were piles of incoming e-mail with 100K attachments clogging the system. The combination of spam, viruses, and outright fraud are making the Internet a very inhospitable place—a situation that will surely stunt its continued growth.

One argument is to blame it on Microsoft, but it is naive and unfair to simply blame the situation on the failings of Microsoft products, especially Outlook. The predominance of Windows and Outlook is a de facto state of affairs brought on by the rapid evolution of the Internet. Outlook gets hacked because it is there. If we all switched to Linux and another e-mail program, it would merely become the new target. At least Microsoft has enough resources to plug the holes when they arise. Many other companies would not.

The latest hall of Internet infamy is something called browser spam, which pops up random advertisements as you are surfing the ’Net. Slipped into your computer with spyware or freeware programs, the program silently watches where you surf. When you land on a site containing keywords, it pops up ads intended to divert you to the spammer’s site. It sounded fearfully familiar to me when I heard about it, and I remember experiencing something even worse. I remember accidentally clicking on something once that replaced my browser home page designation, stuffed a dozen very offensive web sites into my Favorites list, and disabled my ability to erase cookies. I had to reload the entire computer to clear out all the crud.

We’re at a critical point where we have to decide who will control the Internet. I don’t want the alternatives to be the government or none. To regain control of the Internet, every legitimate constituency that uses it will have to bear some responsibility for maintaining its integrity. Corporations from the size of IBM down to little guys like Circuit Cellar will have to recognize that there is a certain expense involved in maintaining ’Net security with the proper firewall software. Having a computer system that can be easily hacked so that it becomes a focal point of virus proliferation should not be allowed. The government will have to make the ’Net safe for businesses by truly cracking down on spammers and con men. If sending a porn spam message to someone under 14 in the U.S. is a felony, then put them in jail.

Finally, Internet users have to become savvier. Phisher sites wouldn’t proliferate if people were smart enough not to respond to stupid e-mails asking them to enter their complete financial details on a phony web site for no other reason than being asked. ’Net users need to be educated that there are some really nasty things that they have to be aware of when they go online and then actually have it sink in. Only by all of us maintaining an adequate level of system defense at every stage along with a workable strategy for validating interactive communication can we ever hope to counteract the con men, spammers, and hackers. It shouldn’t be left to the government alone.