Pay for Your Lunch

It is said that along with freedom comes responsibility. In the
Net world, however, along with freedom has come unsolicited attention. Be it
spam or phishing or other forms of abuse, online anonymity is assuming demonical
proportions.

According to the IDC Survey on Worldwide Email Usage 2007-2011,
this year will see the volume of spam email overtaking the volume of legitimate,
person-to-person email. The survey predicts that 97 bn email messages will be
sent this year, of which 47 bn will be spam messages. Almost as soon as
filtering technologies figure out how to keep out one form of spam, another form
sprouts to beat the technology.

Fraud cases are not far behind in misusing the Net. According to
a survey by Experian, 2,124 victims contacted Experians Victims of Fraud
service for the first time in the second half of 2006, a 69% increase on the
same period in 2005. Techniques of perpetrating fraud have become sophisticated
enough to outwit technology. As recently as April this year four customers of
Dutch bank, ABN Amro, became victims of a phishing scam and revealed their
passwords. An undisclosed amount of money was stolen from their accounts, even
though they were protected by a two-factor authentication system (single-use
multi-digit numerical codes to complement the existing security as well as the
username or PIN).

All this just goes to show that despite huge advancements in
security technologies, the Net is as unsafe a place as ever. Could it be because
the weakest link in the chain is the email system itself? What can be done to
protect users and to enable them to use the power of email communication to the
fullest?

Five big ISPs in the US have taken a first step. They use a
technology called CertifiedEmail from Goodmail Systems to mark legitimate email
with a blue ribbon, before it is delivered to the users mailboxes. If
businesses that send bulk messages want to certify their messages, they need to
pay a quarter of a US cent per email. The target for this scheme are large
corporations and financial institutions, which use mass mailing that can be
spoofed or detected by spam filters. The service will cost about one-tenth the
commercial price for not-for-profit organizations.

I have said this before, and I dont mind repeating. Its a
basic law of economics that theres no such thing as a free lunch. The price
we have paid for free email is huge, if you calculate the cost of valuable
bandwidth wasted on spam and precious time spent on weeding it out. Everyday,
for months on end. Free email is a bad bargain, when you look at the scale of
fraudulent email and the losses caused by it.

Just like you pay more to buy a house in a safe locality
that has good security systems, the time has come to shell out some money to
keep your information secure and your communication systems reliable. And to
ensure that your emails really get delivered and read.

Talking of readingI do hope that you will enjoy reading this
issue of Dataquest. This yearly compilation of data has chartered the
growth of information technology in India from 1983. It is always a challengeand
a pleasureto produce it.

The author is editor-in-chief of CyberMedia, the publisher of Dataquest.

He can be reached at shyamm@cybermedia.co.in