> This is so insidious!  I was talking to my brother the other day, and we just couldn't fathom how spammers could be so tenaciously pushy.  They are sending spam to millions of people who wouldn't in a million years buy their products.  But they'll do anything to force these people get the mail.  I jsut don't understand this. It must be a virus-makers mentality or something.  I REALLY wish these people could be held accountable for their actions.
>
> Excuse my rant! But I can't stand it! :-)
>
> Oh and thanks Jan.  That was informative.  You're doing a great job protecting us from that insanity.

I wish there was some way we could get in a room with them. I really do!

(I can't say what I'd really like to happen, as it'll no doubt be used in some court case in the future when I totally lose it and write some abusive email to the spammers, and then end up in the US supreme court guilty of everything you could shake a stick at.)

Matthew Wilson a écrit :
>>This is so insidious!  I was talking to my brother the other day, and we
>>just couldn't fathom how spammers could be so tenaciously pushy.  They
>>are sending spam to millions of people who wouldn't in a million years
>>buy their products.  But they'll do anything to force these people get
>>the mail.  I jsut don't understand this. It must be a virus-makers
>>mentality or something.  I REALLY wish these people could be held
>>accountable for their actions.
>>
>>Excuse my rant! But I can't stand it! :-)
>>
>>Oh and thanks Jan.  That was informative.  You're doing a great job
>>protecting us from that insanity.
> 
> 
> I wish there was some way we could get in a room with them. I really do!
> 
> (I can't say what I'd really like to happen, as it'll no doubt be used in
> some court case in the future when I totally lose it and write some abusive
> email to the spammers, and then end up in the US supreme court guilty of
> everything you could shake a stick at.)
> 
> 
Hi,

There was an interesting discussion here last June called "interesting spam trap".
It ended with the conclusion that the way that was sugested to fight spam doesn't work unless the whole internet melt down ...
Well IMO measure will be taken before it completely melt down and may be it could be interesting to have a new look in this discussion ?

roland

"roland" <--rv@ronetech.com> wrote in message news:bqf1sn$7o4$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> There was an interesting discussion here last June called "interesting
> spam trap".
> It ended with the conclusion that the way that was sugested to fight
> spam doesn't work unless the whole internet melt down ...
> Well IMO measure will be taken before it completely melt down and may be
> it could be interesting to have a new look in this discussion ?

The problem is simply the fault of SMTP!

If the mail transport protocol is enhanced (yes, they did, but....) to
prevent SPAM, then OK.  However, SMTP is like your own
mailbox at home.  Everyman and his dog can stuff thing into it
if you don't stay watch over it.  Hence this is the situation.

The only difference is the post office can only "relay" if you attach
a stamp.  Junk "mail" does not have stamp - only poor suckers who
will "work" for $5 for to stuff 1000 junk mail into letter boxes will do
it.  Similarly, you will always have poor suckers who think that
they can "work at home" emailing 100,000 people and get paid
$5 for the work, so they repeatedly SPAM people.

Real spammer don't spam themselves. They find some poor soul
to do it - or sell CD's of email addresses.  You and I who owns
a domain or two need a legitimate contact which can be collected
by whois!  I tried that - registered a new domain with a new email
address and only one day later, that email starts getting SPAM!

My $0.05

"KarL" <karl@kimay.net> wrote in message news:bqgi5j$2g5v$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> If the mail transport protocol is enhanced (yes, they did, but....) to
> prevent SPAM, then OK.  However, SMTP is like your own
> mailbox at home.  Everyman and his dog can stuff thing into it
> if you don't stay watch over it.  Hence this is the situation.

The problem caused by spam is characterized by economists as "the tragedy of the commons." Essentially, the cost of spam is not born by the sender, so it is abused. The only solution that has a prayer of working is to make sending emails cost money. I wrote a brief essay on it:

www.walterbright.com/spam.html

Walter a écrit :
> The problem caused by spam is characterized by economists as "the tragedy of
> the commons." Essentially, the cost of spam is not born by the sender, so it
> is abused. The only solution that has a prayer of working is to make sending
> emails cost money. I wrote a brief essay on it:
> 
> www.walterbright.com/spam.html
> 

That's a smart text and IMO the best solution. The trouble is that it doesn't come "naturally" and need a kind of political will to be implemented.
May be for that there must be some intermediate step so that everybody realize the need of it.
Here is a sumarize of the "interesting spam trap" thread at least as I understood it.
There

http://www.unclebobsuncle.com/antispam.html

they suggest a way that if interesting, according to Jan does not work because the crawlers check the validity of the e-mail adresses they collect digging a DNS server.
The dig command is very fast but still. We come to the conclusion that if for example 10000 web pages have 100000 invalid e-mail adresse (=10E9 adrresses), the internet could melt down.
So what ? isn't e-mail going almost unusable already ?
Let's imagine a program that creates random e-mail adresses and make the insertion of those adresses on existing web site very easy. Even those pages can be dynamic and chane all the time.
Imagine a lot of web site owners accept to put one or two big pages of those adresses all over the world. What will appen ? The crawlers are going to crawl, check huge amount of adresses to DNS servers. The internet will become slower, slower, even some DNS server could crash. That's the goal: make the internet completely unusable for a few days. Because of who ? because of the spammers. Be sure then, the people, the companies, then the politicans are going to be very very angry.
Then your solution has a chance to be implemented.

just some thinking

roland

"roland" <--rv@ronetech.com> wrote in message news:bqhk31$10pt$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Walter a écrit :
> > The problem caused by spam is characterized by economists as "the
tragedy of
> > the commons." Essentially, the cost of spam is not born by the sender,
so it
> > is abused. The only solution that has a prayer of working is to make
sending
> > emails cost money. I wrote a brief essay on it:
> >
> > www.walterbright.com/spam.html
> >
>
> That's a smart text and IMO the best solution. The trouble is that it
> doesn't come "naturally" and need a kind of political will to be
> implemented.
> May be for that there must be some intermediate step so that everybody
> realize the need of it.

I think the intermediate step is just one ISP implementing this. Right now, many people accept mail only from whitelists. It's only a small step from there to accepting email only from those willing to pay a penny to send it to you.