No place can spam like South Florida

Unwanted e-mailers thrive with schemes.

By Ian Katz
Business Writer

May 8, 2005

No place does spamming and scamming quite like South Florida.

Together, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties are home to more spammers than any country on Earth. And it's not just the annoying pitches for mortgages and sex pills. Increasingly, law enforcement officials are finding that junk e-mail is a favored weapon of predators, an easy way for criminals to target a world of potential victims from behind a wall of anonymity.

More than a quarter of about 180 hardcore spammers tracked by watchdog group Spamhaus are based in Florida, and most of those are in the tri-county area. The city with the most spammers in the world is Boca Raton. Eleven are listed by Spamhaus as based there, though anti-spam groups say they think that figure misses dozens who send spam at least part-time.

Why South Florida? Spammers and anti-spam groups cite a combination of reasons. They include the warm weather and laid-back lifestyle, lenient bankruptcy laws, proximity to Internet data centers, a history of telemarketing and e-mail marketing, and the state's longstanding image as a good place to do dirty business.

South Florida is so notorious that some experts attributed a short-term decline in global spam after last year's hurricanes to the assumption that the storms disrupted spammers' operations.

And the FBI's North Miami office receives so many fraud complaints that only major cases get the bureau's attention. "If you come in with a $1 million case, we'll put you in line with all the others," said LeVord Burns, supervisory special agent.

South Florida's reputation as a hotbed for mass e-mailers makes it a perfect home for a place called the Bulk Email Software Superstore.

Nestled inconspicuously among medical offices in the Belle Terre East Medical Center in Coral Springs, the store is a one-stop shop for bulk e-mailers.

It doesn't look like much of a superstore. Cardboard boxes and huge bags of plastic foam peanuts sit between several desks in an office barely large enough for about eight people. Most of the space is used for a side business, 1st Class Cigar Humidors.

The store is far more convincing online. Its site offers an array of legal products -- including programs that help place Web site names on search engines and lists of 1 million e-mail addresses costing $39.95 each.

The perception that South Florida is a spam capital is well-ingrained. A dropoff in spam after last year's hurricanes caused some to wonder whether spammers had been temporarily shut down.

Adding to the speculation was the fact that a group monitoring phishing, a scheme in which spam is used to lure people into giving up bank account or credit card information at phony Web sites, reported an unusual decline in September, the month hurricanes Frances and Jeanne hit South Florida.

Experts are divided on how much credence to give the theory, but some say it may have validity. Adam Brower, who tracks spamming activity for Spamhaus, said he thinks it does because e-mail administrators told the group they were getting noticeably less spam after the storms.

Spoiling spam

Spam is almost impossible to avoid, but you can do several things to reduce your exposure:
● Take out a second address at a free e-mail provider such as Yahoo! or Hotmail, and use it when shopping online or when you have to give an e-mail address to a business.
● Guard your first, preferred e-mail address zealously. Give it only to family, friends and business associates.
n-When registering at a Web site, make sure you do not agree to a contract allowing the site to sell your e-mail address.
● Your Internet service provider is your first defense against spam. Though it might not seem that way, ISPs now stop most spam before it gets to your inbox.
●  An additional defense is the filter or blocker in e-mail programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. These allow you to prevent certain senders or key words from getting through.
●  But if that's not enough -- frequently it isn't -- dozens of companies make anti-spam filters or blockers that can help. Below is a sampling. You can also check anti-spam software reviews at www.cnet.com.
● Cloudmark SafetyBar, www.cloudmark.com
● Kaspersky Personal Security Suite, www.kaspersky.com
● MailFrontier Desktop, www.mailfrontier.com
● McAfee Internet Security Suite, www.mcafee.com
● Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005, www.symantec.com
● Zero Spam Network, www.0spam.net