And there is in point of fact an entire police force tracking down
scam artists using the postal mail.
It is rare for blatantly illegal scams to come through postal mail since
in order to get bulk mail rates, the sender has to be identifiable and
accountable.
The bulk of my unwanted postal mail is actually somewhat relevant since it
is for products and services that are sold in England or my district of
London. But I get lots of email for products in Russia, Canada, China,
Korea and the USA which I could not possibly buy.
Analogies can only take you so far.
I think the real lessons from postal mail come from a fairly abstract
level. For instance, requiring more effort to send the mail means that
there is less frivolous mail. Accountability of the sender reduces the
volume of illegal or abusive mail to a trickle. In the email world we
would likely use very different mechanisms to require some per-message
effort by senders or to make senders more accountable. No doubt any such
mechanisms would be subvertable but again, the lesson is that if it
requires EFFORT to subvert the mechanism, then it does reduce the
magnitude of the problem and that in itself may be sufficient to "solve"
the problem.
--Michael Dillon
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