SPAM SPAMMING SPAMMER

Transcription

1 SPAM SPAMMING SPAMMER Have dubious companies or companies unknown to you sent you SMS messages, faxes or mail for dodgy products or products which are harmful to young people? Has someone calling themselves Jenny or Suzy sent you s containing adult offers? Do unknown persons want to send assets out of their country by using access data to your bank account? If so, you are a victim of spam! These information sheets of the Federal Office of Communications are intended to help you to detect spam and combat it effectively. sp@m As the internet has grown, so has spam. The term spam comes from the Spam brand of canned meat marketed in England and the USA. It appears in a sketch by the famous Monty Python comedy group: a waiter in a restaurant wants to sell Spam whenever he takes an order. When a visitor to the restaurant asks for a different dish, a chorus of Vikings sings the refrain Spam, Spam, Spam so loudly and for so long that the customer s protests are drowned by the noise - 1 -

2 What is SPAM? The word spam describes an electronic message ( , fax, SMS message or instant message) which is sent to recipients unsolicited or without their consent. Spamming is the sending of such electronic messages to a large number of recipients. The sender of such advertising is termed a spammer. Nuisance value This mass mailing of messages has a serious downside: Private users inboxes or SMS storage are clogged up with unsolicited messages. Sorting out unwanted and proper messages is onerous and time-consuming. The content of messages often constitutes a major unwanted intrusion into private life and is particularly harmful to young people if it is pornographic. The network infrastructure (e.g. the providers mail servers) can become overloaded. Since a large number of recipients can be reached at (virtually) no cost, spamming is especially attractive for mass advertising. Recently, the spam element of total communications has increased dramatically. Today two out of three messages sent are spam; this threatens the usefulness and the very existence of electronic mail

3 Why am I receiving SPAM? Spamming works because advertising messages are received and the advertised products are purchased. Mailings would stop overnight if it was no longer possible to make money by spamming. Valid addresses of active users are valuable to spammers and they have several means of obtaining them: sp@m Spammers buy address lists from companies which have made it their business to collect addresses or which sell on their customer data or data from other spammers. They search the internet using special software programs, known as harvesters, which filter out addresses from member directories of various services from online providers, such as forums, newsgroups and chat rooms. They generate addresses by randomly combining common forenames and surnames - 3 -

4 How can I protect myself from SPAM s? There is no absolute protection from spam s. If you follow the following basic rules consistently, you can reduce the number of unwanted messages received to a minimum: Only give your personal data ( address, mobile phone number) to trustworthy persons and organisations. In online forms on the internet, enter alternative addresses to protect your main address. For example, you could use free addresses. Activate the spam and virus filters which your internet service provider runs on its mail server. If you still receive spam messages, leave them unopened and delete them. De-activate the automatic preview function in your client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook). If you send one message to many recipients at the same time, enter their addresses in the blind carbon copy (Bcc: field). Urge your acquaintances to do the same there is no extra effort required. However, you will prevent your addresses being disseminated around the world. In order to prevent further dissemination of addresses and false messages, you should never forward electronic chain messages. Virus warnings and free mobile phone campaigns are usually bad jokes or hoax mail. If possible, ensure that your address is not published on websites. If it is necessary to publish an address, make it impossible for it to be harvested, e.g. by displaying the address as an image file or by writing character as at. Give your computer additional protection by installing firewalls and virus scanners. Keep them updated along with your operating system by installing regular updates. This is essential as spam messages are frequently used to spread viruses, worms and trojans

5 How can I protect myself from SPAM SMS messages? Mobile telephone users are increasing being targeted by spam SMS messages. Dubious or unwanted advertising is often sent out randomly in massive quantities to entire blocks of numbers (079, 078, 076). Spam SMS messages and added-value service numbers Generally, the SMS message invites the mobile user to call an unknown added-value service number (an 090x number or a comparable high-price premium-rate number). In this case, the rate for calls to this added-value service number must be clearly indicated. You can find about this in our information booklet Numbers that cost, which is available on our website (www. bakom.admin.ch/0900), or which can be ordered ( ). sp@m Spam SMS messages and short numbers Some spam SMS messages invite you to send a word (e.g. CHAT) to a three- to five-digit short number, to subscribe to a service. In most cases you will then pay for all SMS messages which are received via this subscription. You can find further details on our website: faq/00732/00877/00879/index.html?lang=en - 5 -

6 Measures to combat spam SMS messages and their consequences: Call your service provider s hotline and bar access to all 090x numbers, or only 0906 numbers, from your fixed network and mobile telephone. Providers provide these call bars free of charge. Do not call any numbers which are sent to you in spam SMS messages, simply delete the SMS message, unless you want to submit it as proof if you lodge a complaint. Only subscribe to a service if you are aware of the applicable tariff and the code to de-activate the service. If you repeatedly receive spam SMS messages, report this to your mobile phone operator s hotline and inform them of the precise content of the SMS as well as the sender s number or name. Never answer spam SMS messages to express your indignation. Make a note of the important information and report the incident to your mobile phone operator. From October 2005, providers must provide, free of charge, an option to bar MMS or SMS messages which are sent from short numbers. Consult our section entitled Practical info on our website ( to obtain further information on added-value services and SMS messages

7 Can any action be taken against SPAMMERS? The best protection from spamming is, or course, prevention (cf. information sheets 3 and 4). This is mainly because legal action is not likely to be very successful: sp@m Explicit legal regulation of spamming, such as that contained in various EU directives, does not yet exist in Switzerland, but is to be introduced with the current revision of the Law on Telecommunications (LTC). Some expert opinions consider that spamming might already violate existing provisions of civil or criminal law or the law on fair trading. Such violations would have to be established by the competent cantonal courts. Legal proceedings are frequently very onerous and are associated with financial risks, and their outcome is not always predictable. It is very difficult to enforce any judgement abroad. In most cases spammers are based abroad, in which case legal action in Switzerland makes little sense. It is often very difficult to clearly identify the sender. In individual cases, you should weigh the risks of action against the damage which has been suffered

8 Why is it difficult to identify SPAMMERS? Spammers generally send their s via unprotected mail servers, specifying a false sender to avoid receiving error messages or complaints. Frequently, so-called open proxies are used. In these cases, the spammer uses the computers of people who are uninvolved, and totally without their knowledge. For the spammer this has the major advantage that he himself is not revealed, only an unsuspecting third party or a fictitious, nonexistent sender s address. The cost to the spammer is extremely low. This is attributable to a feature of the SMTP protocol used to send s: the text of an can be sent with hundreds of addresses. The list of these addresses is processed by the server. Thus the spammer only pays the cost of the time for which he himself is online. Also, the effort required of the spammer can be reduced as there are programs which automatically send millions of s throughout the entire world

9 Planned measures to combat SPAMMING In Switzerland: A ban on spam is envisaged in the draft of the revised Law on Telecommunications (LTC) and the Law against Unfair Competition (LUC). At the same time, telecommunication services providers (TSPs) will be obliged to combat spam. The intention is to provide better consumer protection from unwanted advertising. In principle, the mass mailing of s will not be prohibited. In future, however, in the case of electronic advertising mailings, it will be necessary to provide proof of the explicit consent of all recipients (the opt-in system). The only exception: if a customer has given his address to the seller on the occasion of a purchase, the seller may send him advertising for similar goods. sp@m The bill is currently under consultation with the two houses of parliament. The new text could enter into force in the course of Internationally: At present, there is no secure mechanism to check whether the sender of a message is actually who he claims to be. The global introduction of mandatory sender authentication systems is currently being intensively debated. A technical solution is conceivable in principle, but will still require some time; experts are talking of two to seven years

10 Useful Links Special information on spamming Information pages of the CYCOS (Swiss Coordination Unit for Cybercrime Control, Federal Office of Police) MELANI, the Reporting and Analysis Centre for Information Assurance Practical assistance Spamhaus Spam Abuse Net Security test, news and information pages Cyber Security (in English only) In addition, almost all telecommunication services providers provide information on spamming and protection from spamming on their websites. Antivirus programmes and firewalls can be obtained in specialist shops or downloaded from the internet. Some of these programmes are provided free of charge

11 Sheets What is Spam?... 2 Why am I receiving Spam?... 3 How can I protect myself from Spam s?... 4 How can I protect myself from Spam SMS messages?... 5 Can any action be taken against Spammers?... 7 Why is it difficult to identify Spammers?... 8 Planned measures to combat Spamming... 9 Useful Links sp@m

12 This booklet is is available on the OFCOM website (Services -> Practical info -> Telecommunication or bakom.admin.ch/dienstleistungen/info/00542/00886/index. html?lang=en). You can also order the printed version from the following address: OFCOM / BAKOM Spam Zukunftstrasse Biel dir@bakom.admin.ch