NEWS2USE STORY SLUGGED: NEWS2USE-MCUSIC-COLUMN KRT ILLUSTRATION BY NEIL NAKAHODO/KANSAS CITY STAR (August 30) Those irritating problems of the computer world -- spam, viruses and spyware -- continue to grow exponentially, according to a new survey by Consumer Reports. Spyware, which marketing companies use to "spy" on your Internet usage and send pop-up screens to lure you, is not illegal but can slow down your machine. There are ways to fight these menaces, however. (cdm) 2004

The guys who decide how the Internet should work (a few are women) want you to know they don’t run the Internet. Nobody does.

Despite its tremendous influence on Web technology, the Internet Engineering Task Force goes to great lengths to be loosey-goosey, almost hippie-like. It is a purely voluntary group with no dues, no board of directors and no headquarters.

“Our mission is to make the Internet work better,” said Russell Housley of Herndon, Va., one of some 1,200 engineers from the U.S. and 40 other countries who gathered in Chicago last week to swap ideas. Earlier this year, they met in Prague, Czech Republic, and later they will meet in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The engineers make suggestions in the form of technical language protocols with arcane acronyms like TCP and DKIM, and they’ve developed a system for reviewing, approving and publishing standards. But they have no power to enforce anything.

Ordinary people who use the Web would have no idea what these engineers talk about – or that they even exist.

Among their projects: working to decrease phony e-mail messages that ask you to provide your bank, PayPal or some legitimate-sounding outfit with personal financial information.

This form of spam, known as phishing, seeks to trick unsuspecting people by appearing to come from their banks or other places where they do business.

A new IETF standard attaches a signature to real communications from an actual business, enabling computer servers to identify and discard the phonies.

“If a server gets 70 e-mails from PayPal and only five have the real signature, then only five go through and the other 65 don’t,” said Barry Leiba, who has worked with other engineers for about 30 months on the new standard.

“Some companies are starting to adopt the standard, and we hope that within a year people will see fewer phishing spams.

“The consumer doesn’t have to do anything. Users don’t understand the details and don’t have answers. We don’t want to involve them in this.”