Profile: Black list of Internet addresses identify prime sources of spam

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Profile: Black list of Internet addresses identify prime sources of spam

Host: RENEE MONTAGNETime: 10:00-11:00 AM

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

For those of you who are sick and tired of junk e-mail messages, or spam, there's a guerrilla band of cyberwarriors fighting on your behalf. This shadowy group, no one seems to know who they are, manages a black list of Internet addresses that they've identified as the prime sources of spam. But the black list also goes further. In a controversial tactic, it deliberately targets innocent businesses or people whose only crime is using the same Internet service provider as the spammers. NPR's Dan Charles reports.

DAN CHARLES reporting:

Armond Serrian(ph), the sales manager for a small online computer store in northern Ohio, never intended to get caught in the cross fire between spam and its enemies.

Mr. ARMOND SERRIAN (Sales Manager): We mind our own business, don't do any spamming or anything.

CHARLES: But a few weeks ago, Serrian and his fellow salesmen at Uklid Computers(ph) noticed something odd. Some of the e-mails they tried to send to customers were bouncing back at them with peculiar messages attached. The messages said e-mail from Uklid Computers was being rejected from particular mail servers because its Internet address was on a black list, a list put together by the Spam Prevention Early Warning System, or SPEWS. Serrian figured it was a mistake. He looked up the SPEWS Web site hoping to contact the people running it. That didn't help much.

Mr. SERRIAN: It says that it's some address in Urkutz region. It's somewhere in Russia. No phone number as usual, nothing, only e-mail but I tried to send various e-mails and never received any reply or anything.

CHARLES: The Web site directed Serrian to an Internet discussion group devoted to spam prevention. But when Serrian asked the people there how he could get, as he put it, unspewed, they told him, `You can't. Your problem,' they told him, `is your Internet service provider, a company called Vario(ph).' Vario is taking business from spammers, acting as the gateway to the Internet for millions of unwanted e-mails. `You are paying the price,' they said, `and that's on purpose. We want you to pressure Vario to get rid of spammers. If they don't, take your business elsewhere.' Vario does, in fact, have rules that prohibit their customers from sending out spam. A Vario spokesperson acknowledged that some customers have violated those policies but now, she says, Vario is cracking down harder on spammers. Spam consultant Chris Lewis says SPEWS works because enough people who manage big computer systems on the Internet trust it and refuse to accept e-mail from any addresses on that list.

Mr. CHRIS LEWIS (Spam Consultant): SPEWS itself doesn't block anything. SPEWS publishes a list of where we see stuff coming from.

CHARLES: Lewis' job is blocking spam from the 50,000 or so e-mail in boxes at a big multinational company. He can keep track of which addresses on the Internet are sending lots of junk e-mail his way. He says he's never known the SPEWS list to be wrong. Take the case of Armond Serrian's computer store. Vario has assigned it an Internet address ending with the number 52. Lewis' records show no recent e-mail from number 52.

Mr. LEWIS: But at 56, 57, 58 and 59, we have someone who sent us about 250 spams over the last week.

CHARLES: So that's why this whole block of addresses, a whole neighborhood of the Internet managed by Vario, is on the SPEWS black list. Alexis Rosen, president of one of the oldest Internet service providers, a company in New York called Panix, is a little bit sympathetic to the plight of people like Armond Serrian but not much. The plague of spam is killing the Internet he says. The way Rosen sees it, people should stay away from companies that do business with the enemy.

Mr. ALEXIS ROSEN (President, Panix): You associate with people who are a locust of danger and misfortune, don't expect not to be exposed to that. They're bad people. Don't support them.

CHARLES: Some Internet providers who've been targeted by SPEWS say the group's tactics are effective. Rack Space, a provider in San Antonio, kicked several customers off its network recently after SPEWS fingered the company as a major source of spam. Within a few days, Rack Space addresses disappeared from the SPEWS black list. Some free speech advocates, though, say success doesn't justify a strategy of holding hostage the communications of innocent people. The independent Electronic Frontier Foundation, for instance, says any attempt to block legitimate e-mail is intolerable. Employing sweeping black lists in the fight against spam, says one EFF official, is like killing the spirit of the Internet in order to save it. Dan Charles, NPR News, Washington.

MONTAGNE: Turns out the Internet is appreciated by users and non-users alike. A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found 64 percent of non-users expect to be able to find information in at least one of four categories--health care, government, news and shopping. And if you don't use the Internet, how do you know what it offers? Past research shows many non-users at some point had access to the information superhighway or live in households where someone else can log them on.