Re: namedroppers, continued

On Sun, 08 Dec 2002 20:09:24 EST, Bill Cunningham said:

> Lloyd, in the US we pay .37 to mail a first-class letter. I don't know how
> many pence you pay in the UK but we still have "spam" bulk rate unwanted
> solicitations. Forcing the sender to pay doesn't solve a spam problem. I
> don't see how in could. It would force everyone to have to pay a price.
On the flip side, although I still receive a fair number of postal bulk
rate advertisements, they differ in several respects from e-mail spam:

1) They tend to be much more targeted, and as a result more likely to be
of interest.  I get flyers from local supermarkets that I don't actually
shop at, but at least I don't get flyers for supermarkets 3 time zones away.

2) The cost per item tends to keep the total volume down.

3) Almost all the postal advertisements I receive are for legitimate groups
who wish to engage in legitimate business (or sometimes charity) transactions.
Very little of the e-mail spam strikes me as legitimate....

The price-per-item is the main driving force on all three (although with the
third, the fact that large-scale fraud via the mails can get you prison time
helps control that problem as well).

Remember - in 6,000 years (and probably longer) we have yet to find a way to
totally stop scams and con artists.  However, we've gotten fairly good at
at least curtailing their activities to the point that society can function.

We don't need a 100% perfect anti-spam solution.  Like most societal ills,
if we can fix 98% of it, we can move on.
-- 
                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Computer Systems Senior Engineer
                                Virginia Tech

pgpzft4xl8uNX.pgp
Description: PGP signature