SOME time ago, I applied for a job with an internet information service, run by one of the most prominent Bulgarian PR companies.
Afterwards I gave the manager my personal e-mail address to allow him to contact me. To my surprise, several months later and long after I had forgotten the interview, I received an unwanted spam e-mail informing me that his company had moved to a new office.
Then I remembered the manager bragging about the number of their readers and unprecedented internet expansion for a Bulgarian company.
Spam's ways are mysterious. Even the most respectful of companies feel tempted to use it and next time you sign a net petition to protest against the abuse of women's rights in Afghanistan, think twice before giving them your personal e-mail details; you might start getting spam ads for breast enhancement.
According to the technical definition, an electronic message is 'spam' if the following three things are true:
1. The recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients.
2. The recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit and still-revocable permission for it to be sent.
3. The transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to be of disproportionate benefit to the sender.
Spam usually advertises goods, services or companies. These are the most harmless kind, although the most persistent and annoying. Others promote sites with pornographic content, which come rarely but one of which in the morning is enough to make you feel sick till the end of the day.
The most dangerous spam is that of fraudsters like the infamous Nigerian 419 scam, named after the article in the Nigerian Penal Code that defines the offence. These, mainly claiming to be sent from Nigeria but sometimes from other African countries including Benin, are unsolicited emails telling you that the sender has suddenly received a lot of money and wants you help take it out of the country without paying tax.
The e-mail asks for your bank account details and says that you will receive a cut, worth millions of dollars, for providing them.
Once you hand over your details, the fraudster either starts extracting small sums of money from you till you have nothing left, or simply drains your bank account and again leaves you with nothing.
This has proved an extremely effective scheme, because it hooks only people who are greedy and ready to cross a line or two to get the money. Usually such people do not report the offence to the police.
For some years now the fraudsters have been trying to expand into Eastern Europe and, in particular, Bulgaria. They have been exposed in Western Europe and are looking for new markets. Unfortunately for them, Bulgarians had problems with similar pyramid selling schemes in the early 1990s, and so are less likely to fall for such nonsense.
E-mail spam lists are often created by scanning postings, stealing internet mailing lists, or searching the web for addresses. It costs users money, as when you read or receive spam your phone company do not stop charging you just because you do not want it. It also costs internet providers to transmit spam and these costs are passed on indirectly to subscribers.
Because of the country's underdeveloped system of conducting on-line financial transactions, Bulgaria has had relatively little experience of the world's e-business boom and so has been spared some trouble. However, many Bulgarians use free e-mail accounts and often fall victims to spammers.
As early as the late 1990s, people from Bulgarian e-business took steps to fight the plague. In 1999, an e-Consumers Club was founded as a platform for civil action against spam. On its website, it advertises itself as the "club of Bulgarian internet consumers, that support changes to legislation that will criminalise unsolicited bulk mail."
The club proposed amendments to the Protection of Consumers Act to give authorities grounds to trace such mail and prosecute its sources. At the same time, AFA, the Association of Internet Access and Services Provi-ders, published a list of internet rules that can still be found on the website of the Transport and Communication Ministry.
According to these, "members of AFA will do their best to limit the dissemination of unsolicited bulk mail and will create informational devices to detect and stop spamming."
This was a start, but it was still too early for such radical changes to legislation in Bulgaria. At the time, less than 10 per cent of the population had access to the internet and, being middle-aged and older, Bulgarian politicians were even less likely to be hooked up to the web. As a result, they did not take its problems as personally as the younger generations did.
Even the more technologically advanced countries of the West have only recently started introducing legislation protecting privacy on the internet. Following September 11, America is now heading in the opposite direction, making it harder for individuals to ensure their privacy.
In Bulgaria, one of the first devices introduced to block unsolicited mail was the Bulgarian Spam Prevention System created by the Internet Society, an NGO that promotes internet use in the country.
Created for use by their members, it soon became popular outside the society. It works by sorting e-mail received according to three databases: blacklisted internet providers and blacklisted domains (both accessible via dnsbl.isoc.bg zone) and whitelisted internet providers (dnswl.isoc.bg).
Prolink, an internet provider, has also created its own software to fight spam. The company say they did not expect much help from the state and judiciary because there is no legal definition of spam, nor legislation to protects consumers against it. Instead, they offer their clients several ways to detect and delete spam before it gets to their in-boxes. While they offer the software for free, Prolink refuses any responsibility in the event of it not proving effective.
In 2002, the internet and e-mail provider BOL.BG installed a special system which scans incoming e-mails for unsolicited advertising messages. The software also works to protect its clients from viruses. However, even with the software, they admit that some risk still exists and sometimes a message you would like to receive can be blocked by the security system.
Mail provider Abv.bg also offers message filters and if you send spam from their server you can be 'fined' as they find appropriate.
Ultimately, it appears spam is a problem caused by the evolution of net-manners, and here lies its solution.
Any security system can be hacked, as computer-literate teenagers prove every day. But, if we are bored by the multiple offers of viagra and hallucinogenic mushrooms arriving every morning, we should be very careful not to let Bulgarian companies learn the bad manners of e-business.
Remember, one of the "best PR specialists in Bulgaria" still spams me every day with his newsletter and, right now, there is no way to escape it.
Afterwards I gave the manager my personal e-mail address to allow him to contact me. To my surprise, several months later and long after I had forgotten the interview, I received an unwanted spam e-mail informing me that his company had moved to a new office.
Then I remembered the manager bragging about the number of their readers and unprecedented internet expansion for a Bulgarian company.
Spam's ways are mysterious. Even the most respectful of companies feel tempted to use it and next time you sign a net petition to protest against the abuse of women's rights in Afghanistan, think twice before giving them your personal e-mail details; you might start getting spam ads for breast enhancement.
According to the technical definition, an electronic message is 'spam' if the following three things are true:
1. The recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients.
2. The recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit and still-revocable permission for it to be sent.
3. The transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to be of disproportionate benefit to the sender.
Spam usually advertises goods, services or companies. These are the most harmless kind, although the most persistent and annoying. Others promote sites with pornographic content, which come rarely but one of which in the morning is enough to make you feel sick till the end of the day.
The most dangerous spam is that of fraudsters like the infamous Nigerian 419 scam, named after the article in the Nigerian Penal Code that defines the offence. These, mainly claiming to be sent from Nigeria but sometimes from other African countries including Benin, are unsolicited emails telling you that the sender has suddenly received a lot of money and wants you help take it out of the country without paying tax.
The e-mail asks for your bank account details and says that you will receive a cut, worth millions of dollars, for providing them.
Once you hand over your details, the fraudster either starts extracting small sums of money from you till you have nothing left, or simply drains your bank account and again leaves you with nothing.
This has proved an extremely effective scheme, because it hooks only people who are greedy and ready to cross a line or two to get the money. Usually such people do not report the offence to the police.
For some years now the fraudsters have been trying to expand into Eastern Europe and, in particular, Bulgaria. They have been exposed in Western Europe and are looking for new markets. Unfortunately for them, Bulgarians had problems with similar pyramid selling schemes in the early 1990s, and so are less likely to fall for such nonsense.
E-mail spam lists are often created by scanning postings, stealing internet mailing lists, or searching the web for addresses. It costs users money, as when you read or receive spam your phone company do not stop charging you just because you do not want it. It also costs internet providers to transmit spam and these costs are passed on indirectly to subscribers.
Because of the country's underdeveloped system of conducting on-line financial transactions, Bulgaria has had relatively little experience of the world's e-business boom and so has been spared some trouble. However, many Bulgarians use free e-mail accounts and often fall victims to spammers.
As early as the late 1990s, people from Bulgarian e-business took steps to fight the plague. In 1999, an e-Consumers Club was founded as a platform for civil action against spam. On its website, it advertises itself as the "club of Bulgarian internet consumers, that support changes to legislation that will criminalise unsolicited bulk mail."
The club proposed amendments to the Protection of Consumers Act to give authorities grounds to trace such mail and prosecute its sources. At the same time, AFA, the Association of Internet Access and Services Provi-ders, published a list of internet rules that can still be found on the website of the Transport and Communication Ministry.
According to these, "members of AFA will do their best to limit the dissemination of unsolicited bulk mail and will create informational devices to detect and stop spamming."
This was a start, but it was still too early for such radical changes to legislation in Bulgaria. At the time, less than 10 per cent of the population had access to the internet and, being middle-aged and older, Bulgarian politicians were even less likely to be hooked up to the web. As a result, they did not take its problems as personally as the younger generations did.
Even the more technologically advanced countries of the West have only recently started introducing legislation protecting privacy on the internet. Following September 11, America is now heading in the opposite direction, making it harder for individuals to ensure their privacy.
In Bulgaria, one of the first devices introduced to block unsolicited mail was the Bulgarian Spam Prevention System created by the Internet Society, an NGO that promotes internet use in the country.
Created for use by their members, it soon became popular outside the society. It works by sorting e-mail received according to three databases: blacklisted internet providers and blacklisted domains (both accessible via dnsbl.isoc.bg zone) and whitelisted internet providers (dnswl.isoc.bg).
Prolink, an internet provider, has also created its own software to fight spam. The company say they did not expect much help from the state and judiciary because there is no legal definition of spam, nor legislation to protects consumers against it. Instead, they offer their clients several ways to detect and delete spam before it gets to their in-boxes. While they offer the software for free, Prolink refuses any responsibility in the event of it not proving effective.
In 2002, the internet and e-mail provider BOL.BG installed a special system which scans incoming e-mails for unsolicited advertising messages. The software also works to protect its clients from viruses. However, even with the software, they admit that some risk still exists and sometimes a message you would like to receive can be blocked by the security system.
Mail provider Abv.bg also offers message filters and if you send spam from their server you can be 'fined' as they find appropriate.
Ultimately, it appears spam is a problem caused by the evolution of net-manners, and here lies its solution.
Any security system can be hacked, as computer-literate teenagers prove every day. But, if we are bored by the multiple offers of viagra and hallucinogenic mushrooms arriving every morning, we should be very careful not to let Bulgarian companies learn the bad manners of e-business.
Remember, one of the "best PR specialists in Bulgaria" still spams me every day with his newsletter and, right now, there is no way to escape it.
