The prolegomenon of spam. Everything you ever wanted to know about spam, but were afraid to ask. I mean this 6-page New York Times Magazine article has it ALL--a history of spam, a review of spam-filtering software, details of the Federal Trade Commission's actions against spam, catch phrases such as "Spam is the organized crime of the Internet," a review of the costs to Internet service providers, and a brief proposal argument for how to deal with the problem.
Tangled up in spam
Submitted by Clancy on February 11, 2003 - 08:40.
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Re: Tangled up in spam
There are two main points at the end of this article which should be considered as effective ideas for legislative action:
"1) Forging Internet headers should be made illegal. The system depends on accurate information about senders and servers and relays; no one needs a right to falsify this information.
2) Unsolicited bulk mail should carry a mandatory tag. That alone would put consumers back in control; all the complex technological challenge of identifying the spam would vanish."
Re: Tangled up in spam
I don't think #2 you can enforce, worldwide. So you'd still have people in Russia & Holland willing to lend their servers for nefarious activities to make a buck.
However, I don't see why #1 is so impossible. SURELY the expense of implementing a system that makes it harder to forge headers would be worth it - it has to be less time & expense in the long run than running all those elaborate spam filters!
And from what I hear, they CAN, technologically, make it very difficult for someone to forge headers in e-mail.
Of course then there'd always be people who would crack it & do it anyway. But less if it was illegal.
Plus, if there was some way to have authenticizing or something. And give me the ability block anything from countries not willing to participate - like even if they're using a hotmail address or whatnot.
All spam filters you can get are hopelessly inadequate specifically because of header forwarding.
And I get it from both sides. For the past couple of weeks, someone's been forging my domain name/e-mail addresses to send spam - so I'm getting double the spam I usually get in the form of bounces from the spam recipients' or their ISPs.
I'm actually considering going "whitelisting" on all but one e-mail address. And then on that remaining e-mail account, to block whole domains (like hotmail, yahoo, about.com & AOL - except for my whitelisted addresses from those domains).
In 5 e-mail accounts, I, on average, receive several hundred pieces of spam per day (not counting the bounces from my domain being forged - which is another 20-30 a day).
Re: Tangled up in spam
"For the past couple of weeks, someone's been forging my domain name/e-mail addresses to send spam"
Seems like there would be a way to tie forged headers, etc. to fraud. Make it a criminal activity. Maybe this is extreme, but spamming is a social problem that has to be dealt with one way or the other.