Spam Solution?

[The idea]

Suppose people stopped getting email accounts and stopped checking their email. Then you wouldn't see any spam.

Okay, so what's an alternative way to get and send messages without using email? You could join a few different bulletin boards, tell people what names you are using on which boards, and send and receive private messages.

If one bulletin board is down, then you will still be able to send and receive messages.

Would spammers then simply switch to sending PMs? A bulletin board could deal with that problem by limiting the number of PMs that a user can send in a given time period, by preventing a user from repeatedly sending PMs to people who have not responded, and by deleting the accounts of people who abuse the PM system.

Comments?

 

[Soapy Sam]

And if we all cut our heads off, we will have cured dandruff.

Seriously, the point is to prevent parasites freeloading to the extent that they damage a useful system. Doing away with the system is not an acceptable solution.

 

[Skeptoid]

If people would just stop buying the crap the spammers are selling...

 

[Graham]

Why can't ISPs limit the number of emails a person sends in a short period?

Because they're getting paid by the spammers, of course.

The solution to spam is to target the ISPs IMO.

Responsible ISPs should club together to cut out the rogue types.

Graham

 

[The idea]

And if we all cut our heads off, we will have cured dandruff.
[...]Doing away with the system is not an acceptable solution.

I didn't suggest that people stop sending and receiving messages over the internet. I suggested that people stop using email to send and receive messages over the internet.

 

[HarryKeogh]

I have to hand it to AOL, their spam filter works great. maybe one or two a day slip by but that's it. It's amazing how much you can reduce your spam when you can eliminate messages with penis, lengthen, viagra, paris hilton, mortgage and refinance in the subject line. My advice...just get a good spam filter.

as for my work e-mail, i've yet to get one piece of junk e-mail at that address. just because i only use it for work, never for shopping, registering for websites etc.

the bulletin board idea simply would not work in a work environment. what would you put on your business cards?

 

[The idea]

Responsible ISPs should club together to cut out the rogue types.

"Cut out" means what?

Have responsible ISPs just found out about the spam problem and not gotten around to implementing an obvious solution?

 

[The idea]

the bulletin board idea simply would not work in a work environment. what would you put on your business cards?

That's funny! If the mouse hadn't been invented, I suppose that businesses would never have been able to use microcomputers. After all, it's unbusinesslike to use a joystick and it's too difficult for employees to learn to do everything with keyboard commands.

Anyway, a business card could simply give the URL of a forum and the businessperson's username at that forum. Plus, there could be an alternate URL in case the first one is down.

Or maybe that too would be a breach of the businessperson's code of conduct. We can't admit that a system might sometimes be down, can we?

 

[geni]

So you would have to be a member of the bb in order to send a message to someone.

Registation takes time and man power. If you automate it you can't moniter who is coming through and so spammer just register multiple accounts and send to the limity from each one. In order to be useful you are going to have to have message boards with massive memberships which are going to be a right pain to admister. You are also going to have the problem that some groups have a legit reason to send lagre numbers of emails.

 

[The idea]

So you would have to be a member of the bb in order to send a message to someone.

Registration takes time and man power.

The current approach requires you to read an email address from a business card and type it in. The new approach requires you to also register where there are people with similar interests.

Suppose you want to send email to someone in the widget industry and you feel exhausted after having to first register on a widget-oriented bulletin board. Maybe, in addition to the one person you want to send a message to, there are other widget industry people on the board. You might be able to make useful contacts by being on the board.

In order to be useful you are going to have to have message boards with massive memberships which are going to be a right pain to administer.

How many memberships must there be for it to be useful?

You are also going to have the problem that some groups have a legit reason to send large numbers of emails.

If you want to send the same message to a large number of people, then the message information is unlikely to remain private. So the info can be made available by creating a publicly visible thread.

 

[geni]

The current approach requires you to read an email address from a business card and type it in. The new approach requires you to also register where there are people with similar interests.

Suppose you want to send email to someone in the widget industry and you feel exhausted after having to first register on a widget-oriented bulletin board. Maybe, in addition to the one person you want to send a message to, there are other widget industry people on the board. You might be able to make useful contacts by being on the board.

Hey we have a name for that kind of direct marketing. It's called spam.


How many memberships must there be for it to be useful?

A couple of million (I am noing to register to several hundred boards just to email people)


If you want to send the same message to a large number of people, then the message information is unlikely to remain private. So the info can be made available by creating a publicly visible thread.

Did I say anything about the message being the same?

So lets see so far we have a situation where things are made easyer for spamers since they no longer have to work out people web address and a suggestion that you use threads instead of websites.

 

[The idea]

Hey we have a name for that kind of direct marketing. It's called spam.

I don't follow you. You are saying that if someone may be interested in communicating with more than one person who is interested in some particular topic, then the email is spam?

So lets see so far we have a situation where things are made easier for spammers since they no longer have to work out peoples' web addresses

There are already people who send and receive private messages on bulletin boards. Have you been receiving a lot of private messages that are spam?

so far we have [...] a suggestion that you use threads instead of websites.

I don't follow you. A thread is an alternative to a private message, but a thread and a private message both exist on a bulletin board. A bulletin board is a kind of website. So how is a thread an alternative to a website?

 

[HarryKeogh]

actually I'm going to give this idea a shot.

any idea how I can configure my cell phone (which I currently use to occassionally check on e-mail) to log on and view any bulletin board?

 

[The idea]

actually I'm going to give this idea a shot.

Really? I was thinking that it was basically a half-baked idea that might improve with a little bit of baking. I didn't think it was ready for implementation.

any idea how I can configure my cell phone (which I currently use to occassionally check on e-mail) to log on and view any bulletin board?

Sorry, I don't know anything about cell phones. Does your cell phone have some kind of operating system or instruction set? How do you currently configure it to check on e-mail? Maybe a lot of the work required to allow interaction between your cell phone and your email accounts was programmed into the email servers. If that is true, then presumably bulletin boards would have to upgrade their private messaging systems to allow for interaction with cell phones.

 

[Segnosaur]

Why can't ISPs limit the number of emails a person sends in a short period?

Because they're getting paid by the spammers, of course.

The solution to spam is to target the ISPs IMO.

Responsible ISPs should club together to cut out the rogue types.

Although some ISPs are 'spammer friendly', most are not, and will immediately cancel the account of anyone found spamming. There are a number of other issues involved:

- Much spam comes from 'open' relays; in other words, its not the ISP that's responsible for transmitting the mail. The spammer simply finds an open mail relay somewhere in the world and sends through that
- Targetting rogue ISPs can also harm innocent ISPs and/or innocent clients. If I'm an ISP that gets 'blacklisted' by mistake, all my valid (i.e. non-spammer) customers will also be unable to communicate with the rest of the world.

There is a very good solution to the problem of spam, put forward by CAUCE. (See: http://www.cauce.org). Many years ago, when fax machines were new, people would often find their machines were 'spammed' with junk faxes. So, they passed a law that gave the right to sue for each junk fax to the person who receives the fax. The law worked very well. All they have to do is take that law and extend it to e-mail. The advantages of the approach:
- The police/government doesn't have to get involved, since its the person who receives the junk mail who decides to sue or not
- Just the threat of being sued will stop the vast majority of spammers
- The law would give the right to sue the persion on who's behalf the fax was sent. Many spammers are off-shore (or use off-shore services), and can't be touched directly. But, somewhere along the line, they have to be selling a product, and usually that 'product' is sold right from the U.S.
If you ever look at spam, you may notice some spam has a note about not being for people in Washington State. Well, Washington passed a law similar to the one I described above; spammers have to be careful not to send spam to anyone who lives there (and can't send spam from there either.)

The only possible problem is if someone decides to cause problems by sending bogus spam on behalf of someone who didn't request it. I would consider that a case of computer fraud, and once the majority of spam is removed, the cases of fraud should be much easier to track down.

 

[HarryKeogh]

Really? I was thinking that it was basically a half-baked idea that might improve with a little bit of baking. I didn't think it was ready for implementation.


Sorry, I don't know anything about cell phones. Does your cell phone have some kind of operating system or instruction set? How do you currently configure it to check on e-mail? Maybe a lot of the work required to allow interaction between your cell phone and your email accounts was programmed into the email servers. If that is true, then presumably bulletin boards would have to upgrade their private messaging systems to allow for interaction with cell phones.

as long as I'm clear...we were both being sarcastic right?

 

[jimlintott]

Why can't ISPs limit the number of emails a person sends in a short period?

It's really quite trivial to set up a machine as an MTA (mail transport agent). You don't have to send mail through your ISPs MTA. Unfortunately the payload on some recent virusses were actually MTAs that could be exploited by spammers. Some ISPs and users have their MTA improperly configured in a way that a spammer can use it as a relay.


More than you wanted (or needed) to know about e-mail.


Your computer could be sending out spam right now.

 

[Psi Baba]

If people would just stop buying the crap the spammers are selling...

I'm glad you brought this up, because I have become totally skeptical of the idea of spam as a viable marketing tool. Most of the spam I get is unintelligible and incomprehensible. Even of the spam that is readable, there is often no way to contact the would-be vendor even if you were crazy enough to want what they are selling. And how many of those are scams? A lot of spam has subject lines like "You are an idiot" and "I hate you." If one were to open these and see that it's an ad for something, who in the world would buy anything through such a process? I am skeptical that anything is ever sold through spam. I am skeptical that spam is a serious marketing tool. I have seen no evidence that spammers sell anything other than mailing lists or click-throughs. There is no way to do any kind of research into the effectiveness of spam as a marketing tool, since only spammers would have access to the necessary data, and they are untrustworthy. Spammers are increasingly employing virus-like techniques. Virus spreaders are using spamming techniques to spread their viruses. The line between the two is rapidly blurring. All evidence suggests that, like viruses, spam is nothing more than a malicious vandalism and spammers should be dealt with accordingly. Personally, I favor life-imprisonment, at the very least. Sooner or later someone is going to go postal on one those high-profile spammers who occasionally get interviewed by Wired or something.

 

[evildave]

actually I'm going to give this idea a shot.

any idea how I can configure my cell phone (which I currently use to occassionally check on e-mail) to log on and view any bulletin board?

For MY cel phone, there is information on using its internal modem with a cable.
http://www.rogerbinns.com/vx4400/vx4400faq.html

Search for "(your cel phone's model number) FAQ", and see if anyone's been as busy tinkering with it as my phone.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I don't use a cellphone. My thumbs are opposed to the idea.

Speaking of The Idea- I appreciate that you did not mean stop using the Internet for mail. My point is this: What we need to do is stop the spammers abusing the system, not move to an alternative and less convenient system to avoid them.

They would follow. Also, this would unfairly load down BBS systems with traffic irrelevant to their operations. JREF can barely handle it's own legit load for example. I wonder how many other boards are supported by solitary volunteers? It would be wrong to abuse their labour like this.

In any case, the situation does seem to be improving. I rarely see any spam now on Hotmail and have seen none at all since I started using my ISP supplied system. (A decent router modem/ Firewall / Spam filter system may be the reason for that.)