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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Jeff Fox

Aired July 13, 2003 - 08:13   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: If you get e-mail, you get this problem. Electronic spam, it's the Achilles Heel of e-mail. And it's become so pervasive and invasive Congress is leaping into the fray.
CNN's Julie Vallese reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You won't find this refrigerator in any home store. It can only be found at the Federal Trade Commission. It's full of only one product, spam. E- mail spam that is. Forty-six million so far with 102,000 messages added each day.

HOWARD BEALES, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION: People are always going to get marketing that they didn't want. Or that they thought they didn't want.

VALLESE: But the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee believes consumers should decide who enters their home, be it by door, phone or Internet.

REP. BILLY TAUZIN (R-LA), CHMN., ENERGY & COMMERCE: Consumers don't have a vehicle to deal with it. They don't have a right established in law and they don't have a system by which they can stop junk e-mailers.

VALLESE: There are now four bills before Congress all with proposals on how to combat spam.

(on camera): One receiving the most attention a do not spam registry, similar to the FTC's do not call registry that's set up to cut down on telemarketing. While the idea intrigues many, its has its problems.

BEALES: For one thing it's easy to figure out phone numbers and hard figure out valid e-mail addresses. And a do not spam list would be a list of valid e-mail addresses.

VALLESE: Basically handing spammers a treasure trove of targets. So while Congress works on a law it's up to consumer to combat spam and the best way?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is to actually do nothing, which is don't respond to spam. Don't even preview spam in your preview window on your e-mail program. And certainly don't opt out. VALLESE: Unless one you want spam, because once you respond you're sure to get a full plate.

Julie Vallese, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Well, we've just heard what you shouldn't do when you get spam. But what can you do to stop it or try to get rid of it when you have it? Next Month's "Consumer Reports" has a survival guide. And senior editor Jeff Fox joins us with more strategies to take the bite out of the spam.

But Jeff, let's start by asking how big a problem is spam at the moment?

JEFF FOX, SENIOR EDITOR, "CONSUMER REPORTS": Good morning, John. It's quite a big problem as the report just indicated it's pretty close to half of all e-mail. AOL is reporting that they block billions of messages a day now.

VAUSE: There's some reports, some suggestion that one way of combating e-mail is something like a 10-cent charge per e-mail and that will stop the spammers. Is that realistic?

FOX: Well, since a lot of these spammers are kind of hiding and as Commissioner Beales mentioned that it's hard to find them, assessing a charge on people you can't find is kind of impractical I think.

VAUSE: Right. And there are some reports it seems to be getting worst just in the last few months alone. Is that right?

FOX: Yes. The indication we have is, for example, the peak load of spam blocked by American On-Line, which the source of the most reliable statistics right now, I think that their peak load tripled in the first few months of this year.

VAUSE: Any reason why this is happening?

FOX: Well, I think that the main reason for the increase in spam is a combination of technology and economics. You can send like a million e-mail messages for perhaps $500. Technology is also increasing the spam. The html e-mail, those are those e-mails that look like web pages. Those are very attractive to spammers because it lets them put ads in the spam and it also lets them monitor if you've received the spam.

VAUSE: Well, what's the big deal here, though? How hard is it to delete it? What's the big deal?

FOX: For an individual consumer? It's not hard to delete it. But you know, as most people know when you look through your in box, differentiating the spam from the regular mail can be quite time- consuming. So a big part of it is separating it out. You know that saves you a lot of trouble. VAUSE: OK. Let's talk about some of the software which, available. What can you actually get with your IP, your Internet service provider to block spam and does it work? Is it effective?

FOX: Some of the major Internet providers like AOL and Microsoft Network and Earth Link do some preliminary blocking to cut down on your spam, but we know from experience that a lot of that gets through. We opened some Internet accounts and we got spammed in a matter of weeks even with major providers.

So what we suggest for people who use e-mail programs and we tested some of the spam-blocking products that work with e-mail programs as kind of a backup to your provider, the best one we found was actually a free product called SA Proxy. The No. 2 product in our test was Spam Catcher Universal. And then there's Spam Sleuth. Those two products cost about $30 each.

VAUSE: And many people would say that is money well spent. Thank you very much, Jeff, for joining us on CNN this morning. Take care.

FOX: You're welcome.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired July 13, 2003 - 08:13   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: If you get e-mail, you get this problem. Electronic spam, it's the Achilles Heel of e-mail. And it's become so pervasive and invasive Congress is leaping into the fray.
CNN's Julie Vallese reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You won't find this refrigerator in any home store. It can only be found at the Federal Trade Commission. It's full of only one product, spam. E- mail spam that is. Forty-six million so far with 102,000 messages added each day.

HOWARD BEALES, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION: People are always going to get marketing that they didn't want. Or that they thought they didn't want.

VALLESE: But the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee believes consumers should decide who enters their home, be it by door, phone or Internet.

REP. BILLY TAUZIN (R-LA), CHMN., ENERGY & COMMERCE: Consumers don't have a vehicle to deal with it. They don't have a right established in law and they don't have a system by which they can stop junk e-mailers.

VALLESE: There are now four bills before Congress all with proposals on how to combat spam.

(on camera): One receiving the most attention a do not spam registry, similar to the FTC's do not call registry that's set up to cut down on telemarketing. While the idea intrigues many, its has its problems.

BEALES: For one thing it's easy to figure out phone numbers and hard figure out valid e-mail addresses. And a do not spam list would be a list of valid e-mail addresses.

VALLESE: Basically handing spammers a treasure trove of targets. So while Congress works on a law it's up to consumer to combat spam and the best way?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is to actually do nothing, which is don't respond to spam. Don't even preview spam in your preview window on your e-mail program. And certainly don't opt out. VALLESE: Unless one you want spam, because once you respond you're sure to get a full plate.

Julie Vallese, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Well, we've just heard what you shouldn't do when you get spam. But what can you do to stop it or try to get rid of it when you have it? Next Month's "Consumer Reports" has a survival guide. And senior editor Jeff Fox joins us with more strategies to take the bite out of the spam.

But Jeff, let's start by asking how big a problem is spam at the moment?

JEFF FOX, SENIOR EDITOR, "CONSUMER REPORTS": Good morning, John. It's quite a big problem as the report just indicated it's pretty close to half of all e-mail. AOL is reporting that they block billions of messages a day now.

VAUSE: There's some reports, some suggestion that one way of combating e-mail is something like a 10-cent charge per e-mail and that will stop the spammers. Is that realistic?

FOX: Well, since a lot of these spammers are kind of hiding and as Commissioner Beales mentioned that it's hard to find them, assessing a charge on people you can't find is kind of impractical I think.

VAUSE: Right. And there are some reports it seems to be getting worst just in the last few months alone. Is that right?

FOX: Yes. The indication we have is, for example, the peak load of spam blocked by American On-Line, which the source of the most reliable statistics right now, I think that their peak load tripled in the first few months of this year.

VAUSE: Any reason why this is happening?

FOX: Well, I think that the main reason for the increase in spam is a combination of technology and economics. You can send like a million e-mail messages for perhaps $500. Technology is also increasing the spam. The html e-mail, those are those e-mails that look like web pages. Those are very attractive to spammers because it lets them put ads in the spam and it also lets them monitor if you've received the spam.

VAUSE: Well, what's the big deal here, though? How hard is it to delete it? What's the big deal?

FOX: For an individual consumer? It's not hard to delete it. But you know, as most people know when you look through your in box, differentiating the spam from the regular mail can be quite time- consuming. So a big part of it is separating it out. You know that saves you a lot of trouble. VAUSE: OK. Let's talk about some of the software which, available. What can you actually get with your IP, your Internet service provider to block spam and does it work? Is it effective?

FOX: Some of the major Internet providers like AOL and Microsoft Network and Earth Link do some preliminary blocking to cut down on your spam, but we know from experience that a lot of that gets through. We opened some Internet accounts and we got spammed in a matter of weeks even with major providers.

So what we suggest for people who use e-mail programs and we tested some of the spam-blocking products that work with e-mail programs as kind of a backup to your provider, the best one we found was actually a free product called SA Proxy. The No. 2 product in our test was Spam Catcher Universal. And then there's Spam Sleuth. Those two products cost about $30 each.

VAUSE: And many people would say that is money well spent. Thank you very much, Jeff, for joining us on CNN this morning. Take care.

FOX: You're welcome.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com