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EarthLink to Offer Anti-Spam E-Mail System
By Jonathan Krim
A system that backers claim will eliminate e-mail spam is about to be
deployed by a major Internet service provider, giving a boost to an emerging
technology that if widely adopted would change how people communicate
online.
Atlanta-based EarthLink Inc., the country's third-largest provider of
for-pay e-mail accounts, will roll out test versions of the system for its 5
million subscribers this month.
Known as "challenge-response" technology, the system thwarts the ability
of spammers to reach their intended audience with millions of automatically
generated e-mails. When someone sends an e-mail to a challenge-response
user, he or she gets an e-mail back asking to verify that the sender is a
live person.
Once the sender does that by replicating a word or picture displayed on the
screen, the original e-mail is allowed through. The system automatically
recognizes future e-mails from the same sender, so the verification needs
only to be performed once. Without the verification, the e-mail is not
delivered.
Some experts see problems with the technology and doubt that consumers will
warm to a process that adds another step to e-mail delivery. The technology
is available from a handful of small vendors for a fee, but the customer
base is small.
EarthLink is betting that customers will put up with a little extra effort
in order to stem the tide of unsolicited messages pushing diet fads,
get-rich schemes and pornography.
Like arch rivals America Online Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.,
EarthLink has spent millions of dollars developing software to block spam.
But spammers have found ways to defeat them and spam accounts for 40 percent
of all e-mail.
"The limitations on filters are truly very daunting," said James Anderson,
EarthLink's vice president of product development. Even as filters improve,
users must constantly adjust them so that they don't block messages they
want to receive, he said.
The challenge-response system will be optional and free for EarthLink
subscribers, Anderson said. It will allow users to automatically clear the
e-mail addresses of friends, family members and other associates in their
electronic address books, so those people would not receive the challenge
e-mail.
Executives at EarthLink's three top competitors, who recently formed a
coalition to combat spam, said they are evaluating challenge-response
technology. Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN and Hotmail networks already employ
challenge-response when someone seeks to open an e-mail account.
Yahoo also recently started using a variation of the system when an account
holder is sending high volumes of mail, to crack down on spammers using
Yahoo accounts.
America Online spokesman Nicholas J. Graham said that for now, AOL is
concerned about putting too many burdens on users and that the technology is
"not a one-size-fits-all panacea."
In addition to requiring senders to verify themselves, users would have to
use special e-mail addresses when registering to purchase goods online,
because vendors often send sales confirmation notices by computer. The
special addresses are designed to route such messages to a user's regular
in-box.
The new system could slow delivery of some e-mail. For instance, a sender
might walk away from his or her computer after sending an initial message,
not noticing until hours later that a challenge had come back.
Phil Goldman, chief executive of Mailblocks Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up
that provides a challenge-response service, said people will quickly get
over those hurdles.
"It's about social habits," said Goldman, a former Microsoft executive
whose service launched a month ago. "When the rotary telephone first came
out, people said, 'You mean I have to dial seven numbers?' "
Goldman said developers of the Mailblocks system own patents on the
challenge-response technology. His company already is seeking to enforce its
two patents against another small provider of the technology, Spam Arrest
LLC of Seattle.
Brian Cartmell, manager at Spam Arrest, said his company is vigorously
contesting the Mailblocks claim. He said Spam Arrest, which has been
operating since April 2002, has "many thousands" of customers but he
declined to be more specific.
Anderson said Goldman's patent claims are "not relevant" to the product
EarthLink developed inside the company.
Goldman acknowledged that the system is in its infancy and needs ongoing
refinement. It is probably not best suited for businesses that sell directly
to customers, he said, because consumers might resent having to send
verification when they want to make a purchase.
Others see deeper problems.
"Challenge-response will indeed block the vast majority of spam," said
John R. Levine, a computer consultant and co-author of "The Internet for
Dummies." But he said a lot of people will never respond to a challenge, or
will think the challenge e-mail itself is spam.
Levine said that already, spammers are disguising e-mails as challenges to
get people to open the messages. And he worries that if large numbers of
people begin to use the system, user address books will be a target of
hackers seeking to obtain lists of approved addresses.
Some viruses launch attacks using computer address books, and if that
happened, confidence in the challenge-response system would erode, Levine
said.
"The consequences of spammers' response to challenge-response will be
really ugly," Levine said.
Boosters of the system remain confident that challenge-response can
effectively combat spammers' attempts to sabotage the process. "This is as
close as there is to the silver bullet" against spam, Anderson said.
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