Brad Templeton <brad(_at_)templetons(_dot_)com> wrote:
We want to do the best job we can, but no better. Our just systems
are all designed to let 10 murderers go free to avoid punishing one
innocent person, and likewise our solution to spam. It must let
some spam through, or it is doing too "good" a job.
I understand that it's difficult to prevent spam even from networks
you trust. There's always one person on such a network willing to to
one dumb thing.
My concern was that dropping the amount of spam by 3 orders of
magnitude isn't enough. There are ISP's getting 100's of millions of
spams a day. Even at 1/1000 the rate, 100,000 spams a day is
problematic to deal with.
Still, we wil do what we can. The plus side is that if you could
cut spam by 3 orders of magnitude (which means I get 2 a week, btw)
you do something else to the economics of spam, namely make it 1000
times less effective,
How do you know?
Getting rid of spam to useless junk addresses, for example,
(fake-email(_at_)everydomain(_dot_)com) will mean only one thing: The success
rate of spam will go UP.
We're not dealing just with spam delivered to end users. We're also
dealing with about the same amount of traffic again, which is
undeliverable mail. That has a cost, too.
Now he has to send a billion to get 5 responses, and that's not
practical any more.
And the load on the network goes up by a huge factor, which makes
the problem worse.
Really? In spite of all the spam I get, I have only gotten one
overzelous mailing from a company I bought from
I agree that's not the problem. The problem is the 10,000 other
companies who are clueless, and who are trying to get your business.
You have no relationship with them, and don't want one. But they have
the time and money to drive you crazy with spam attempts.
In my mind, this is no different than criminal harassment. It's
stalking.
Under the definition I propose, they can't trade mailing addresses,
unless you consent to this.
Why would they care?
It's like stores not being allowed to sell alcohol to minors. If
they discover that the fines are less than the profits, they'll go
ahead and do it. Legislating intelligent or friendly behaviour on the
part of the spammers will only help if they can be tracked down, and
if the drawbacks of spamming are more than the benefits.
The fact that they want to "help" you by selling you a product is
irrelevant.
I simply have seen no evidence of a problem here, and I get a lot of
spam and do a lot of buying online. We should all want to see a real
study showing more than anecdotal evidence, before making any moves
in this direction.
I think we're talking at cross purposes. The spam *I* get is from
people wanting to sell me something. I don't know how they got my
address, and I don't care. I just want it to stop.
Email from companies I already deal with is a tiny part of the spam
problem. Even if every company I did business sent me one spam a day,
the result would be less than 100 extra messages. Plus, I know where
they are, and can physically track them down and yell at them.
It's the *other* 10,000 companies that I don't want to do business
who are the cause of the problem. They're hidden behind layers of
paperwork, and are nearly impossible for the average person to trace
(technically, or legally). I'm not convinced that legislation will
help.
Alan DeKok.
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