BA107 Social and Political Environment of Business

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BA107Social and Political Environment of Business

• Week 10 Nonmarket Environment of High Tech
  Spam Case

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Agenda for today

• Brief midterm review
• Paper review on-line
• Mini review regulation vs. industrial policy
• Spam debate
• Compare the nonmarket issues related to spam to
  those related to telemarketing. What are their
  similarities and differences?
• Compare the following two approaches to spam
  policies regulation industrial policy
• Take the position of a professional spammer. How
  might you respond to regulatory and industrial
  policy arguments for controlling spam?
• Take the position of the Direct Marketing
  Association and describe the activities your
  organization is doing or should be doing
  regarding spam.
• Take the position of Micrsoft. How effective are
  their lawsuits likely to be against spammers?
  Other nonmarket strategies?

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Midterm Paper Review

• Midterm
• 3 Essay questions criteria
• Paper
• Common mistakes (on-line)
• Paper sample (on-line)

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Industrial Policy

• Any selective government measure that prevents or
  promotes changes in the structure of the economy
• Public polices that target selected sectors of
  the economy for protection, promotion, and
  development

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Types of Industrial Policy

• Accelerationists pinpoint industries that can
  become international competitors
• Adjusters offer assistance to declining
  industries, but them must commit to modernize
• Targeters select a group of sectors (high tech)
  that could be used to develop growth
• Central planners more comprehensive plans

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Regulation

• Regulation is government intervention in economic
  activity using commands, controls, and incentives
• Regulation is implemented by independent
  commissions and agencies of the executive branch.

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(No Transcript)
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A Debate among the Legislators How to deal with
spam

• On Capitol Hill there is debate on a bill to be
  voted on within twenty minutes. Now is your last
  chance to defend your opinion and propose your
  ideal bill before the voting.

• Your team has two team leaders who will present
  your opinion. Then youll hear from the other
  sides.
• Then you debate.
• Ill be the chairperson to call the next speaker
  in your debate.

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Agenda for the debate

• The chair divides the whole room into four teams
  . Ill appoint two team leaders
• You have 7 minutes to prepare -- discuss with
  your team members and prepare a slide
• The team leaders have to summarize their teams
  opinion and present it. You can use the
  transparency if you like. Each team has a maximum
  of 3 minutes to present.
• YOUR GOAL convince the voters
• Then vote.

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Spam Teams (3 minutes to present)

• Independent voters
• Nonmarket issues spam vs. telemarketing
• Regulation vs. Industrial policy applied to spam
• Direct Marketing Association
• Microsoft
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Association of former telemarketers that now work
  as professional spammers

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Avenues of Attack

• Add costs
• Make the cost of sending spam non-trivial
• Perhaps with ISP-level settlements?

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Avenues of Attack

• Subtract revenues
• Can credit card companies revoke spammers
  merchant accounts?
• Follow the money!

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Avenues of Attack

• Limit new ISP accounts capabilities
• Spammers create dial-up accounts, use them, and
  lose them
• Could the volume of e-mail be limited until the
  credit card is verified, billed, and paid?

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Avenues of Attack

• Close open relays
• Work with O/S creators and distributors to ensure
  that the default configuration of a system does
  NOT allow its use as an open relay
• Tier 1 ISPs can require their downstream
  customers to prohibit open relays

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Avenues of Attack

• Educate
• Every consumer O/S and e-mail client should
  include a warning about spam
• Every ISP who offers mail should warn its
  customers about spam
• Offer education to existing customers
• Dont buy from spammers
• If it sounds too good to be true, it is
• How to report spam to ISP abuse coordinators

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Avenues of Attack

• Legislate and Prosecute
• Fraud is already illegal

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Content Analysis

• Good algorithms yield good results
• SpamAssassin - current software choice

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Algorithms

• Examine headers and message
• Flexible
• Externally and internally provided
• Default SpamAssassin comes with hundreds of rules

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Flagging vs Action

• Flagging add or modify message to allow for
  quick identification or further processing by
  filters
• Action automagically delete or file message to
  specific folder

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Identification Terms

• Positive message is spam
• Negative message is not spam
• False Positive message is not spam but
  identified as such bad even for a few messages
• False Negative message is spam but not
  identified as such OK in a small percentage of
  messages

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Action

• Deleting not an option due to false positives
• User doesnt have to do anything
• Filing results in client issues like subscribing
  to folders
• Potential problems in later phases with different
  server side implementations

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SpamAssassin

• Each rule yields a weight (positive or negative)
• Rules are additive
• Thresholds how many rules matched to reach
  conclusion
• Flagging
  Subject POTENTIAL SPAM
  orginal-subject
• Additional header tags for sophisticated users