Fan Spam Is Hard To Shake

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Feb 08, 2000 Source: The San Fransisco Chronicle Submitted By: Unsubscribing from e-mail lists nearly impossible David Lazarus, Chronicle Staff Writer Michael Ashley Lopez logged onto the Net last November and found that he had been included on an e-mail list for fans of teen idol Britney Spears. His nightmare was just beginning. ``I opened that first stupid e-mail, wasted about 13 seconds reading it, and then clicked on the link to unsubscribe from the list,'' Lopez recalled. ``Two days later, the next e-mail arrived.'' He tried again, and again, to unsubscribe from the Britney Spears list, and still the messages kept coming -- cloying invitations to check out Britney's latest single or preview her newest video. Lopez, 32, an archaeology graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, soon started receiving messages as well for fans of sugar-coated pop acts like the Backstreet Boys and Christina Aguilera. He has persistently tried to unsubscribe from the mailing list. He has tried to contact the operator of the Web site where the messages originate. He has even signed up for a service that blocks e-mail from getting through. And still the messages keep arriving with invitations to receive a Valentine's Day postcard from Britney or to enter the Christina home video sweepstakes. ``How do I get out of this?'' Lopez asked in desperation last week. How indeed? Lopez now finds himself in that peculiar little corner of hell populated by people who can't shake chronic spammers or free themselves from unwanted e-mail lists. And the sad fact is, there's little he can do to remedy things. ``Nothing will work 100 percent, short of changing your e-mail address,'' said Julian Haight, a Seattle technology consultant who operates an online service called SpamCop, which traces unsolicited e-mail back to its source. ``No matter how well you try to filter a spammer, they're always working to defeat the filter,'' he said. In Lopez's case, his trip to the seventh ring of Britney hell began when someone -- he doesn't know who exactly -- malevolently submitted his e-mail address to the Peeps Republic, a Web site dedicated to promoting some of the latest rap and pop stars. There was no contact information at the Peeps Republic. But Lopez found that the site appeared to be owned by an online music store called Getmusic.com. At Getmusic, there was a button to contact customer service. But to get through, you first had to register by submitting your name and e-mail address -- an option that, under the circumstances, was the last thing Lopez was going to do. He visited Britney Spears' official Web site and sent e-mail to the operator asking for help in being released from the Britney mailing list. Lopez received a polite response apologizing for the intrusion and assuring him that he would receive no more Britney newsletters. A few minutes later, a second e-mail arrived stating that Britneyspears.com has no affiliation with the Peeps Republic and cannot remove Lopez from Peeps' list. Back at square one, he took a closer look at Peeps and Getmusic, and found that both appeared to be owned by recording-industry giant BMG Entertainment. Lopez clicked his way to BMG.com, where he hoped to find contact information to extricate himself from Britney's clutches. He found links back to Peeps Republic and Getmusic, but, amazingly, not one link to contact the parent company. Lopez turned to SpamCop, which, for a small fee, will attempt to hunt down the source of an e-mail message and block further messages from that server. ``I got an e-mail the next day from Britney Spears,'' he lamented. Finally, almost three months after that first Britney message arrived in his computer, Lopez is at last ready to throw in the towel -- something those with less fortitude might have done weeks ago. ``I don't want to sue these guys,'' he said. ``I don't want to be a part of this. I've got work to do.'' Actually, Lopez probably could have saved himself a lot of grief had he known one of the dirty little secrets of spam: More often than not, unsubscribe links are a ruse to get recipients to inform the spammer's computers that they've hit an active e-mail address. An active address subsequently will be bombarded with messages from the original spammer and others who purchase the spammer's mailing list. ``Never, ever unsubscribe,'' said Nick Nicholas, a spokesman for Redwood City's Mail Abuse Prevention System, or MAPS (``spam'' spelled backward), a leading combatant in the war on electronic junk mail. ``Unsubscribing is just an invitation to an e-mailer for even more spam,'' he said. One way that MAPS fights back is through its ``Realtime Blackhole List,'' which reports chronic spammers to Internet service providers. But Nicholas conceded that any time a bulk e-mailer is cut off from an ISP's servers, the spam will just be rerouted through other servers. ``There's no easy answer,'' he said. Short of changing one's e-mail address all together, the most prudent course of action is usually to delete spam without responding and hope that, sooner or later, it goes away. This will come as little solace to Lopez, as will the response of a Getmusic.com executive who was finally reached by a reporter after days of repeated calls. ``We're very surprised to hear that this happened,'' said Laurie Rubenstein, vice president of the firm. ``We're very attentive and very concerned about these issues.'' She said that when her technicians looked into the problem, they found that a switch in the domain name for Lopez's e-mail address at Berkeley apparently had prevented the unsubscribe feature from working. Rubenstein said Lopez can expect to be off the Britney list within days. Lopez said he'll believe it when he sees it. ``This is insanity,'' he said. In the meantime, he is making it his mission to warn others about the evils of e-mail lists. ``When I tell people my story, I make them swear to God, on their mother's life, that they'll never do this to anyone,'' Lopez said. And in a final act of revenge, he signed up the Peeps Republic for its own e-mail list. Welcome to Britney hell. Comment on this item. Next Item: Courtney gets her call -- and a song from Backstreet Boy Prev Item: It's Not Your Kid Sister's Tiger Beat