Yakov Shafranovich <Yakov Shafranovich> wrote:
Let me ask a different question - can you elaborate as to the specific
reasons why e-postage will help with spam. Perhaps we can achieve those
same reasons with other means as well.
Surely the argument is that if the cost of sending spam goes up to such a
level that sending spam ceases to be profitable, then no-one will do it any
more?
I don't fully believe this argument myself, or at least I don't believe it
can be achieved by e-postage, for a number of reasons.
First, we still see junk mail on paper. Something like 65% of my paper mail
is junk. So the charge for paper mail hasn't eliminated spam.
Second, who pays the charge? If a spammer "owns" a bunch of zombie machines
scattered round the world, they pay the email charge - he doesn't. So it's
not much of a deterrent to him. Of course it may encourage people to secure
their machines so that they don't end up paying, but I'm not certain that
that will produce a big reduction in volume - look at the number of critical
security problems published in the last year (by reliable bodies like CERT)
for *NIX systems, or the rather smaller number for Windows systems - and
look at the delays in availability of fixes. There's plenty of window for
the attackers even if people are sufficiently clued up to keep their
machines "secure". Of course it's possible to build very secure systems and
to use multiple layers of firewalls, but the average guy is not going to do
that because it's both extremely difficult with current platforms and very
expensive.
Third, there's one born every minute. The spammer can recruit people as
spam-mailers, people who believe they will make money by working for him and
won't stop sending spam on his behalf until they have lost a packet (some
won't even stop until they've gone bankrupt). They make the losses, he
makes the profits.
Fourth, we don't know what the value (to the spammer) of spam is. Obviously
different spams generate different returns. The gullibility and greed of
some people is so great that even with a high email price some spams will
remain profitable - and of course this relates to the first point above. So
we don't know how high we have to set the price to get spam down to a
"reasonable" level, and setting the price too high is as bad as the spam -
my email is just as unusable if no-one can afford to email me as it is if I
have to spend too much time filtering out the spam. Maybe over time we can
find the right pricing level, if there is one, but maybe there isn't a right
pricing level to find.
Tom
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