Obama Takes on "Spam"

It’s no big secret that both public and private U.S. computer networks have been under constant attack by hackers and email spammers. All branches of government have been hit with huge amounts of spam, spyware, phishing attacks and other scams.

According to government sources these attacks have ranged from low-levels of nuisance hacking to serious and aggressive probes and attacks on many federal government computer networks. There is a strong suspicion that possibly China and Russia, among other nations, have actually supported and sponsored cyber espionage against the West. It was revealed earlier this year that there had been a cyber attack against the North American electrical grid, and that some Pentagon computer networks were temporarily infected by a virus.

President Obama has admitted that even his campaign computers were victimized by hackers. He reassured his campaign contributors and donors that none of their personal information had been tampered with or compromised.

On May 29th, Obama announced that he will choose the person he wants to run a new White House Office of Cyber Security. That position will report to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council. An official title has not yet been determined, but the person filling the position will have regular and direct access to the President.

President Obama announces creation of Office of Cyber Security

Because I am not only a Senior Editor for JustOneOpinion.com, but also its webmaster, the security of this website is obviously very important to me. I’ve installed several built-in safeguards that not only protect the website itself, but also our contributors and visitors. So far these precautions have been working exceptionally well and I’ve had no reports or technical indications of any security breaches in connection with this site.

That is not to say that we have escaped unscathed. We are constantly being bombarded with fake and spammy comments, most coming from just a few servers in Russia, Switzerland and Italy. In just the past seven days I have removed over 500 spam comments and questionable emails from this site -- and an equal number from other sites that I manage or support. These have all been trapped before they can actually enter into the JOO systems. I’ve also identified and blocked several suspect ISPs that seem to be major sources for spammy emails and comments.

It was recently reported that 97% of all emails during the past year contained spam or other problematic content. That is considered to be an improvement since this number is DOWN from the 99% reported in 2007. For those of us who are heavy users of email this is not much of an an improvement -- nor is it an overstatement of the facts.

I have several personal and business email addresses. Each of them average ten to twenty spammy emails every day, whether or not I’ve received any legitimate emails intended for me from friends and business associates.

I recently created a new Yahoo! email address that I was going to use for one particular purpose. I created it, tested it once, and then left it alone for several days. I had not used it at all and had not given it out to any other website or a single living soul. I had not sent a single email from it. Only Yahoo! and I knew that it existed.

When I finally popped in a few days later to write a new email, the mail box already had fifty emails in the “Spam” folder and ten emails in the “Inbox” folder that were all spam. I just want to know how these spammers knew that I was actually interested in “sexy blonde strippers” and “Viaggrra”? Who told these people about my most personal and private secrets!?!?

The bright side of getting all that spam is that I now have a money-gram waiting for me at the local Western Union office and some really nice fellow in Nigeria has 10 million Euros that he wants to transfer to my bank and I don’t have to do much of anything except give him my account number and my password so that he can deposit it for me.

Seriously -- it is time that the federal government step in and take a very hard line against cyber crime and spam. In 2003 the Bush Administration passed the CAN-SPAM Act that was intended to be a deterrent. So far it has been a disastrous failure.

Realistically, all that CAN-SPAM did was to complicate the issue rather than act as a solution. It created a few rules for legitimate commercial email and websites that real spammers simply ignore. Now it is often harder to get an email response back from your real estate broker or mortgage banker than it is to get twenty-five clearly spammy ads for “Pedi-Paws.” In many cases your banker has probably tried to comply with the law and still failed to get his email to you -- while some spammer who completely ignored the law was able to get dozens of obvious spam emails through unblocked.

Let’s face it, President Obama has his hands full with this issue. The odds are high that maybe a few congressional Democrats and several Republicans will try to put up roadblocks and attempt to make this an issue of “personal freedoms” and “right to freely communicate.”

I think President Obama will have the total support of a majority of American business and personal computer users. At the same time, I would not want to be a member of Congress and have my name listed in the Congressional Record as having voted against such legislation.

The secret to success: “Follow the money!”

For many years I’ve studied this problem and considered dozens of possible solutions to stopping the worst of the spammers. My guess it that if you get the big guys, the little ones will probably be scared off and completely quit the business.

Since the Bush Administration suspended most of our privacy rights under the so-called “Patriot Act” and started listening in to all of our phone calls, the government also has the ability to read and index all of our emails and other online communications. After several years of the Feds “listening in,” there simply has to be a huge resource of data from which the government can mine evidence to identify and take action against the worst of these spammers.

Think about it: There’s no real advantage to spammers to send out millions of emails every hour for nothing. It takes some effort to prepare the emails, gather up millions of email addresses, and to track them. Someone is obviously paying them for doing all of this.

In almost every case, there is a major company or corporation that benefits from sales generated by all this spam. Either the makers of “Pedi-Paws” or some of their distributors have to be making money from the effort of the spammers, so they pay commissions for each sale to the spammers. These commissions can be huge. If the response rate is just one thousandth of a percent, literally hundreds of sales will be made every day for that one product. If a spammer can send out enough emails to generate ten thousand sales and get a 50 cent commission per each, that is $5000 a day, or nearly $2 million a year from just one product. Then all they do is “rinse and repeat!”

A far more important issue with spam is not just that a few computer whizzes have figured out how to set their computers to make a ton of money for them -- but rather the danger posed by just a few criminal hackers who also use spammy emails to distribute viruses via hijacked computers or by stealing private and personal data from other folks’ computer hard drives.

Those of us that use PCs (IBM-Intel personal computers) with Microsoft Windows software are especially vulnerable to viruses, spyware and ad-ware. This situation is not so much due to the limitations of the PC or Microsoft software, but rather the fact that there are so many in use in millions of homes and businesses that they make a more tempting target for hackers to concentrate on.

It has been said that Macintosh/Apple style computers are safer to use, as are Firefox and Opera browsers. This is true to some extent, but not completely. There are some very serious viruses that exist that attack those computers, but because the numbers are so much smaller, they are less inviting targets and less profitable for hackers to spend their time on.

What the Government Can Do

• Let the hackers and spammers know that the Feds are coming after them.
• Ask Congress to pass emergency legislation that will make any attack on either personal, business or government computers a federal crime with some very stiff confiscatory and jail penalties. Make this legislation effective within 30-60 days.
• Let the government offer the first one hundred hackers and spammers to come forward, turn themselves in, and work for the government as consultants to catch other spammers and hackers. Carefully monitor their activities so that we don’t “let the fox into the hen house.”
• Have a team of investigators and volunteers start responding to spam, make purchases, and then follow the money to see who gets the final payoff.
• Establish severe penalties and fines for any American business or manufacturer that allows its products to be sold via spam emails or spammy websites.
• Establish severe penalties, including revocation of importing rights, to any foreign company that is found to use spam emails to sell their products.
• Send out regular bulletins and updates to major newspapers and TV outlets that will identify spam emails and the products they sell. Some people may think that buying “Pedi-Paws” through an email vendor might be a good idea. Let the public know the risks and tell them who the culprits really are.
• Create a government website that publishes examples of real and current phishing and spam emails. For example, if a person gets an email from “Bank of America” (I’ve gotten at least a dozen in the past week alone and I don’t even have an account with BofA) telling the reader that their bank account will be frozen if they don’t email back their account number and password, they should be able to go to the government site and look it up to see if it is legitimate or not. If not, they can place a report to be followed up on by investigators. If it is, then the government can contact the bank and tell them to change their procedures and to stop sending the emails.
• If I can follow the tracks back to the computers that are sending spam using widely available software and simple online searches, then so can the government. Let’s see them put some effort behind their wagging tongues for a change.

This is serious, folks! I’m pleased that President Obama has taken this initiative. We need to give him our full support. If he is successful in his efforts, we will see an immediate decrease in cyber crimes, virus attacks on our computers, and identity theft crimes.

In addition to supporting President Obama in this national effort, we should withhold our votes from any member of Congress, any U.S. Senator, or any state government official that opposes this effort. We will never be truly free to communicate through the Internet or by email until this problem with cyber crime is finally under control. Anyone who opposes this effort is either an idiot or in cahoots with the spammers.

Just One Opinion will publish the names of any public official, elected or appointed, that fails to support this effort. They do have the right to speak their mind, and we will publish their comments and concerns, but we want to know what possible reason they would have to not support President Obama’s effort to curb cyber crime and the resulting identity theft that affects us all.

I’d like to suggest that we use NBC’s online predator documentaries as an example of how to deal with spammers. These shows use volunteers over 18 to act as underage boys and girls chatting online. Using MySpace.com and other online social networks they use volunteer experts to lure potential pedophiles into showing up at private homes all across the country with the intent to have sex or otherwise molest these presumably “under-aged minors.” When they do show up they are caught “with their pants down,” so to speak, and then turned over to the local police.

Watch one or two of these shows and you will see dozens of men of all races, income levels and social backgrounds show up to be caught in a trap of their own making. Many bring condoms, liquor, sex toys -- and sometimes even ropes, knives and guns. When they do show up, they are turned over to the local police for arrest and booking. In the process, no one is hurt and no children are actually involved.

That is what our government needs to do with spammers: Find a way to identify and locate them, suck them into a trap, and then turn them over to the police. Then let the Feds go after the people they are really working for and do the same to them.