California Dreamin' of an end to spam

Some of the world's leading high-tech companies have convened in London this week to discuss the burning issues affecting the IT community.

Unsurprisingly one of the issues at the top of the agenda at this year's Cal-IT event, organised by the State of California, was the problem of spam email.

Although technology will eventually start rolling back the worrying advances spam email has made, the immediate future holds with it the prospects of more spam scams and lawsuits, according to panellists on the event's Spam Debate.

In many quarters spam now accounts for around 70 per cent of email traffic and it is estimated around a tenth of it is now also fraudulent. Recent highly organised scams trying to ‘phish’ for bank account details from customers of institutions such as Barclays, Citibank, Halifax, Lloyds TSB and Natwest have propelled the scam email into the limelight.

Speaking at the Cal-IT conference taking place in London this week, Enrique Salem, CEO of Brightmail, said: "We will see aggressive use of phishing" over the coming 12 months.

Also speaking on the same panel debate, Mike Dalton, senior VP Northern Europe for Network Associates, said: "The fraudulent aspect is becoming very scary. We need prison sentences handed down in the same way as we’re now seeing virus writers going to prison."

In general, the view is that there needs to be tougher legislation against spammers, but panellists also voiced concerns that it is unlikely to deter the most prevalent spammers.

An obvious weapon against them is education, at the level of individual end users as well as in IT departments and ISPs.

However, a recent case in the US – at a large IT infrastructure vendor where an employee is suing for being exposed to certain material via spam – shows some additional risks faced by companies. Individuals tired of being exposed to highly offensive pornography are starting to blame their employers for failing to protect them in the workplace.

Brightmail's Salem said this will inevitably lead to "an increasing amount of hostile workplace lawsuits."

However, despite the inevitability of ISPs reassessing their practices and some of the key email protocols, the panel highlighted the feeling of resignation that – while spam may be curbed – it will always exist as some bulk mailers stay one step ahead.

Kevin Blakeman, president, US of Surfcontrol, said: "[In a year's time] it will still be around but delivered to different places using different methods. Marketing has probably been around since the first profession – and they're going to get you."