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Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems 181

and varies monthly due to the impact of new technologies (both supportive and
discouraging of spammers), new prosecutions, and seasonal demand for products
and services. Spam costs for businesses are very high (estimated at over $50 bil-
lion per year) because of the computing and network resources consumed by
billions of unwanted e-mail messages and the time required to deal with them.
Internet service providers and individuals can combat spam by using spam
filtering software to block suspicious e-mail before it enters a recipient’s e-mail
inbox. However, spam filters may block legitimate messages. Spammers know
how to skirt around filters by continually changing their e-mail accounts, by
incorporating spam messages in images, by embedding spam in e-mail attach-
ments and electronic greeting cards, and by using other people’s computers
that have been hijacked by botnets (see Chapter 8). Many spam messages are
sent from one country while another country hosts the spam Web site.
Spamming is more tightly regulated in Europe than in the United States. On
May 30, 2002, the European Parliament passed a ban on unsolicited commer-
cial messaging. Electronic marketing can be targeted only to people who have
given prior consent.
The U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which went into effect on January 1, 2004,
does not outlaw spamming but does ban deceptive e-mail practices by requir-
ing commercial e-mail messages to display accurate subject lines, identify the
true senders, and offer recipients an easy way to remove their names from
e-mail lists. It also prohibits the use of fake return addresses. A few people have
been prosecuted under the law, but it has had a negligible impact on spam-
ming in large part because of the Internet’s exceptionally poor security and
the use of offshore servers and botnets. In 2008, Robert Soloway, the so-called
Seattle “Spam King,” was sentenced to 47 months in prison for sending over 90
million spam messages in just three months off two servers. In 2011, the so-
called Facebook “Spam King,” Sanford Wallace, was indicted for sending over
27 million spam messages to Facebook users. He is facing a 40-year sentence
because of prior spamming convictions.
Another negative impact of computer technology is the growing use of infor-
mation technology to conduct surveillance of employees and ordinary citizens
not engaged in any illegal behavior but nevertheless considered worth watch-
ing. The Interactive Session on Organizations explores this topic.

Employment: Trickle-Down Technology and
Reengineering Job Loss
Reengineering work is typically hailed in the information systems community as
a major benefit of new information technology. It is much less frequently noted
that redesigning business processes has caused millions of mid-level managers
and clerical workers to lose their jobs. One economist has raised the possibility
that we will create a society run by a small “high tech elite of corporate profes-
sionals . . . in a nation of the permanently unemployed” (Rifkin, 1993). In 2011,
some economists have sounded new alarms about information and computer
technology threatening middle-class, white-collar jobs (in addition to blue- collar
factory jobs). Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew P. McAfee argue that the pace of
automation has picked up in recent years because of a combination of technolo-
gies including robotics, numerically controlled machines, computerized inven-
tory control, pattern recognition, voice recognition, and online commerce. One
result is that machines can now do a great many jobs heretofore reserved for
humans including tech support, call center work, X-ray examiners, and even
legal document review (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2011).
Other economists are much more sanguine about the potential job losses.
They believe relieving bright, educated workers from reengineered jobs will

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