Concepts Assignment - 4 - Automation

Concept 10 - Automation
“...using various automated processes can make one question the reliability of the results you receive…by surrendering control over information finding to others we are either lulled into false security or constantly nagged by doubts that the process is time-efficient but quality-inefficient.”

Automation is the act of executing repetitious processes, and computers are able to do this exceedingly fast and efficiently. It is a key part of the Internet yet not all of its automated processes are beneficial. Spam is possibly the biggest automated online nuisance today and it can, and usually does, affect anybody with an email address. The most effective method we have of counteracting spam is through the use of more automation. However, as we will see, automation facilitates Spam more than it prevents it.

For spam to still exist means that some people actually make purchase that spam offers, so spammers want to increase the chance of sales by sending to as many email addresses as possible. One way for spammers to find email addresses is through the use of Spambots. A Spambot is an automated computer program that scans the internet for email addresses aiming to build email databases (Microsoft Exchange Definitions - Spambot, 2005). The sheer size of the Internet means that the number of email addresses that are ‘harvested’ by Spambots is huge, and spammers can use the resulting databases to propagate their unsolicited email, in hope of attracting sales. Our ability to fight back against spammers is through the use of automated filters. Two common types are IP and word filters.
Internet Service Providers use automated programs to look for blasts of emails originating from the same IP address. When these programs find an IP address that they suspect of spamming, they can block it. This sounds effective, but spammers are able to change their IP with the ISP filters none the wiser (Stopping Spam, n.d). They can continue on until the new IP is blocked, and the process starts again, meaning IP filtering is not able to totally prevent spam.

Word filters scan messages as they come through your email program, looking for key words which are blacklisted as being typical spam words (Stopping Spam, n.d). They don’t have to necessarily be single words, but can also be chains of words forming a sentence such as “check out this free offer!”. When the filter finds a blacklisted word or chain of words, the message is blocked and quarantined. The problem here is that they could potentially block a legitimate email that contains these words. It is possible to add rules which allow certain people through, but if you get an email from someone that does not have a rule, you could potentially never read it. This is not ideal, especially in a business situation. Spammers also use tricks to circumvent words filters, such as spelling words slightly differently so that word filters don’t recognise them, therefore word filters are not 100% effective in preventing spam.

As we can see, automation easily allows spammers to continuously scan for new email addresses and build databases quickly. On the other hand, automated filters are always struggling to keep up with spam, and spammers are always finding ways to get around them. Therefore automation facilitates Spam more than it prevents it.

Site 1:
Mullane, G. S. (n.d.). Spambot Beware. Retrieved January 25, 2009, from Turn Step: http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/harassment.html

This site contains some really good information on how to ‘harass’ Spambots as they attempt to scan your site. By harass I mean make it hard if not impossible for the Spambot to do its job. There are automated process which attempt to trap and break Spambots by overloading them, although they are not so reliable with your system resources or software. The word limit prevented me from divulging on these automated processes, but none the less they also show why automation is not as effective in dealing with spam as it is allowing it.

Site 2:
Claburn, T. (2005, February 5). Spam Costs Billions. Retrieved January 25, 2009, from Information Week: http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=59300834

Another thing I would have liked to go into but couldn’t because of the word count was the how automation’s inability to prevent spam is costing business billions of dollars every year, thus rendering it cost-inefficient in this sense. This is not directly a profit to spammers, but essentially business is paying for spammers to spam. This is extremely relevant, because automation is the only weapon we have to fight with. As long as Spammers have the upper hand with automation, then it will continue to cost us severely.

Bibliography
Microsoft Exchange Definitions - Spambot. (2005, 3 21). Retrieved January 25, 2009, from SearchExchange.com: http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid43_gci896167,00.html

Stopping Spam. (n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2009, from How Stuff Works: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/spam3.htm