@ Tech News - The Spam Situation

On a typical day, Hotmail subscribers collectively receive more than 1 billion pieces of junk e-mail. Such spam accounts for 80 percent of messages received - not including mail blocked by Hotmail's first line of filters.

Though Hotmail develops various tools for evading spam, unwanted messages keep slipping through. "And it's increasing every day," said Parul Shah, a product manager with Microsoft Corp., which runs Hotmail. "Every time Hotmail or another e-mail service provider finds a way to detect spam, the spammer immediately has a way to get around that."

At AT&T WorldNet a year ago, about a dozen out of every 100 messages were spam. Today, it's closer to 20 or 25 -- on top of another 200 or 300 e-mails sent to invalid accounts by spammers trying to guess addresses.

In June, anti-spam filtering company Brightmail recorded 4.8 million spam attacks -- each consisting of thousands or even millions of e-mail containing the same pitch. That's a more than fivefold increase from a year earlier.

Why the increase? For one, spammers are sending out higher volumes because filters are better at blocking messages. Spammers have also gotten smarter about harvesting e-mail addresses and evading filters.

E-mail marketing is also cheap -- spammers pay less than a penny per pitch, compared with $1 for telemarketing and 75 cents for direct mail, according to the SpamCon Foundation, an anti-spam group.

For most everyone else, spam has taken its toll. Some parents are banning their younger kids from e-mail. Other people change e-mail accounts so often that even friends can't reach them. Some Internet newcomers are closing accounts after a few months. While the first half-billion Internet users have become dependent on e-mail, "many of the next two billion may decide the Internet is not worth the trouble," John Patrick, chairman of the industry-supported Global Internet Project, said at a recent conference on spam. Technological tools are available to block spam, but the more aggressive they are, the more legitimate mail gets discarded in the process.

Earlier this year, the Web site MacSlash.com temporarily lost its domain name when a renewal notice got rejected as spam, while filters at AT&T Broadband inadvertently blocked its own notice of a rate increase. In the absence of federal regulation, America Online, EarthLink and other Internet service providers have tried suing the most active spammers, winning cases but doing little to deter others. About half the states do have laws meant to deter unsolicited mass mailings. But they have proven weak or difficult to enforce.

--From AP

Next Tech Story / Back To Top

@ Tech News - Florida ready to move past chad of 2000 election

On Sept. 10, the Florida primary will mark the first statewide election since the voting debacle of November 2000. Florida has made broad changes since then. Election supervisors have been busy demonstrating the touch-screen voting machines at malls, senior centers and small civic gatherings. The screens resemble bank ATMs.

With touch screens, voters select a candidate by touching a circle next to the person's name. The technology allows voters to review their selections. It also includes some fail-safe measures. For example, it won't allow voters to mistakenly mark more than one candidate in a single race or skip marking a particular race. Such "over-votes" or "under-votes" were a problem in 2000. With the old punch-card technology, Florida put the outcome of the presidential election on hold through 36 days of recounts, court battles and protests. Florida bore the brunt of national scrutiny of voting methods. But the narrow outcome revealed voting system flaws nationwide.

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the nation's voting technology after the 2000 election. They concluded that between 4 million and 6 million Americans were unable to vote, or their votes were uncounted:

• At least 1.5 million presidential votes were lost due to faulty equipment or confusing ballot design
• Registration mix-ups accounted for 1.5 million to 3 million lost votes
• Polling place foul-ups led to 1 million lost votes

Most Americans were surprised to discover vast numbers of votes are routinely uncounted in a system hobbled by everything from voter error to flawed technology. If victory margins are wide, the spoiled votes rarely become an issue. But in a close race, the shortcomings are revealed.

Which is why a nation learned, through the Florida recounts, about the once-obscure chad. Chad - not "chads" - are tiny bits of paper that result after a voter makes selections on a punch-card ballot.

But with the new voting technology, there will be no more chad problems. Fifteen of Florida's 67 counties purchased touch-screen machines. The other counties opted to use optical scan ballots, in which voters pencil in ovals next to a candidate's name, as with standardized school tests.

--From USA Today

$ Marketing News - Traditional Media Planning Goes Online

Re-Tooling the Internet for 'Reach' and 'Frequency'

The Internet was once famously called the most measurable of all media. Now, it's about to be plunged into the world of traditional media planning, where reach and frequency are the metrics of choice and little is precise.

Researchers, online ad serving companies and operations that sell media planning software to agencies are racing to offer reach and frequency planning tools for the Internet. The end result: For the first time ever, media planners will have workable tools to compare the Internet to TV, radio and magazines.

Being able to easily compare Internet and offline ad metrics is a development that could have huge implications for the future of online advertising, where in 2001 the nation's 100 Leading National Advertisers spent just 0.7% of their total measured ad dollars, according to Advertising Age.

In mid-July, the industry took a step forward when the Association of American Advertising Agencies and Association of National Advertisers announced Advertising Digital Identification. Ad-ID will assign ads across every medium a specific computer code to facilitate cross-media buys.

As with past efforts to develop Internet measurement standards, there's a lot of jockeying for position. The Advertising Research Foundation in March declared that the most accurate reach and frequency tools should include data from both syndicated research providers (such as comScore Networks) and ad serving companies (such as DoubleClick).

All sides realize the endgame is to include data on Web media properties in cross-media planning tools from companies like Interactive Market Systems and Telmar, which offer software to help media planners build ad schedules. That's leading to alliances. NetRatings has a deal with IMS, DoubleClick is negotiating a partnership with NetRatings, and Telmar says it's working with comScore, Atlas DMT and NetRatings.

It's a stew of activity that media buyers and marketers are watching closely. Integrated ad buys are growing in popularity, and a reach/frequency tool for the Internet could help make them easier.

--from Ad Age

Back To Top