On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:13:02PM +0100, Ian Eiloart wrote:
The canonical definition of spam (in the context of email) was settled
on a very long time ago ("unsolicited bulk email") and is NOT in need of
tinkering or refinement. It's served us very well -- and one reason
why is that it's *deliberately* silent on a number of points. It would
be a very serious mistake -- one that would greatly assist spammers --
to change that situation.
Frankly, I don't like that definition. Specifically it misses an
important class of spam - well targeted, individualised, unsolicited
marketing messages which are necessarily unique (and hence not bulk).
Two points:
1. Anything that's not bulk isn't spam, and is thus outside the consideration
of this working group. It may be unwelcome or annoying or any number of
other things, but none of that matters.
2. That definition does not miss any classes of [email] spam: it covers
them all beautifully, which is one reason why it's not in need of revision.
It is silent on the point of "targeting", for example, because it doesn't
matter whether spam is targeted or not. It's silent on the point of whether
messages are individualized, because *that* doesn't matter either. So,
for example, suppose some spammer went through the trouble to enumerate
which MTA you and I and 5000 other folks are using, and sent us UBE which
(a) was targeted on a per-MTA basis and (b) addressed us by full name in
the body. It's obviously UBE, thus obviously spam -- and equally obviously,
covered the same long-standing definition that has served us well.
---Rsk
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