Posted on 04/01/2005 12:24:21 PM PST by Maceman
OK. I've had it with spam. I have posted my thoughts on why it should be outlawed on this thread.
But the question is, how can it be done and enforced without having the feds take over the Internet. Here is my suggestion from the above-referenced thread to kick-off the brainstorming session.
If you think this idea sucks, fine. Feel free to come up with something better.
But here is my contribution to get the ball rolling.
And what else will it filter? I have seen to many instances of spam filters eating important e-mails, especially at the corporate level.
This is also handy for figuring out which internet services are handing out your contact information to spammers and "mailing lists"...
If they take credit card payments, then US laws can put enough pressure on the card companies to be enlisted in a global anti-spam effort.
Look how effectively "US laws" have been at drying up global terrorist funding.
No. There is no legal definition of Spam.
There won't be one. Like "loitering", everyone knows what it is, but there is no legal definition of it.
The solution will eventually consist of a small fee to send email, with authentication of the sender for billing purposes. This will give the same certainty of the identity of the sender as current credit card transactions. Not 100 %, but good.
The solution will also require tight control on which servers are allowed to connect to the internet and send mail, plus authentication.
We are nowhere near there yet.
The only thing to do now, is to never buy from Spam.
(But one person's Spam is another's marketing mail)
Aren't you spamming this board?
2) Sign up with an ISP that provides at least three email addresses with your access account.
3) Use one email address for private correspondence (friends, family). Tell them they are not to give the address to anyone. Instruct your friends and family that if someone asks them for your email address, have them tell that someone that they'll let you know that they want your email address. You then decide whether you want to give your private email address to the person asking. You can also decide to give them your non-personal email instead (see below). P.S. You should also tell your friends and family to treat your phone number the same as your personal email address. (And you do have an unlisted phone number, don't you?)
4) If any of your friends or family forward an email to you and several other people, send them back an email with the following message:
When sending an e-mail to a group of people who don't necessarily know each other, it is better to put the list of addresses in the "Bcc:" (blind cc) field than using the "To:" field. I can read the email address of everyone you sent this email to, and so can everyone else who received the email. This is not good practice for maintaining privacy and preventing the spread of viruses, worms, and spam. It's the equivalent of giving your personal phone book to each person you call.
5) Use the second email address (non-personal) for ordering items over the internet, confirmations, mailing lists, etc. Always check the options on the order forms, and opt out of any promotional emails unless you really really want to receive them. Don't give out your non-personal address more often than seven to ten days since the last time. This way you'll know who corrupted your address if you start getting spam. Send them a nasty email and STOP doing business with them.
6) You should be able to go quite awhile without getting spam by this method (I'm over two years). If the non-personal email gets corrupted, delete it (it's only for ordering and mailing lists) and create a new one for future use. If your personal email gets corrupted, delete it, create a new one, and raise bloody hell with your friends, relatives, or ISP, depending on the source of the corruption.
7) Do not post your email addresses on the internet. (Duh)
8) You can expand the above strategy to a third or fourth email address, each address used for a different purpose, if you are so inclined.
If all individuals followed the above guidelines, the mailing lists of email addresses that spammers use would slowly but surely dry up.
Best of all, no government involvement necessary.
If you mean am I sending thousands or millions of messages to this board, using automation and fraudulent identification to hide my account identity, I have to say 'no.'
Besides, I asked for constructive suggestions on this thread, and you have failed on that score, newbie. (At least compared to me you are a newbie here.)
Silence, Newbie.
Why should I have to go through all that? I want one e-mail account, which I use both for my home-based business and personal correspondence. I do have a web-mail for especiallyconfidential messages.
But I don't give out my e-mail to anyone except clients, prospects and friends/family. And yet still, the spammers find me.
And no, I don't use a free e-mail account.
"...but what is your suggestion to the issue of how to catch them?"
You got me. Private reporting?
http://www.spamcops.org/
Honeytraps?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1349327/posts
Some prospects may consider your email junk or spam, and make sure spammers learn of your address in retaliation. That is why you need to separate personal and business emails with separate addresses.
You will save yourself alot of agita by not waiting for government action. And government action will only create other, unintended problems and raise the cost of using the internet.
I have had zero spam now for at least a year.
Zero.
Whatever you do, don't sign up with major carriers that have addresses like myname@cox.net. Such addresses are way to easy to guess with bot software because cox.net has zillions of valid addresses. My e-mail address is something like myemail@myurl.com. And since myurl.com only has three valid e-mail accounts, it will never be attacked by spammers.
Also, when you send your e-mail address over the net to anyone, don't put it in a style that can be detected by software. Don't type it myemail@myisp.com. Instead type it myemail-at-myisp-dot-com. A human can easily figure out how to use that address, but software will not find it.
There is a product out there (can't think of the name now) that will only forward e-mail from known accounts. To prevent hacking, the first time it sees an e-mail from an unknown account, it sends an image with a password in it that can't be read by software. If that e-mail is replied to, with the correct password by the sender, it's proof that a human is sending the mail, and the e-mail gets through.
The long term fix is a brand new e-mail system set up from scratch. It would have features that would prevent spam, such as opt-in recieving of e-mail, with ironclad security of sending address info.
But the problem is not spam on your computer or mine or that of any other knowledgeable user.
It's the millions of spams clogging ISPs and businesses every day - for which we have to pay - which exist only because there are so damn many clueless users who let their machines get 0wned, or who stupidly send out chain letters, etc.
Most spam is either from offshore or from spambots.
A spambot is a PC that was infected with a virus with a mass mailing payload.
If you want to do something about spam, switch to an ISP that uses RBLS (blacklists) and content filters on their inbound email relays.
I'm sure that will be a big consolation to you after your CC numbers are posted on the internet and you spend years trying to sort it out :-)
The only way you'll get what you want is to hire a secretary to pre-read your email... and even the warm body will make mistakes.
Also, end-users don't install spamassassin etc, it's done on the inbound email relays through which everyone's email is received... and running mail relays is a non-trivial job.
Never gotten a false positive in the 3 months I've been using it. It seems like you're following the golden hammer mis-paradigm wherein you only know of one tool to deal with all problems (your hammer) so all problems become nails.
We will have to pay even more if government gets involved, and there is no magic law that will stop the spam. Despite our best efforts, Osama bin Laden is still at large. How do you expect the government to catch some spammer based in Ukraine or Singapore?
Dealing with spam is better than not having the internet around. Let the users deal with spam. Getting government involved will produce unwanted, unpredictable, unavoidable (you can't buy government-blocker software the way you can buy spam-blocker software) consequences that will be much more difficult and costly to deal with than spam.
Why should I have to go through that expense and loss of privacy>
Boy, I have to say I am disappointed with my fellow freepers.
So many reasons why suggestions won't work, and why nothing can be done. But not to many positive suggestions.
The whole idea of brainstorming is that one suspens the critical function untill the process is over. The idea is to get as many ideas as possible on the table.
Then once they're all out there where everyone can look at them, that is the time to beging analyzing them critically.
You Might Be An Anti-Spam Kook If...
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html
OK, here's a brainstorm for you:
What if we could get say, 100,000 folks to simply REPLY to the spam? BUT--they'd simply go to whatever site the spammer wants them to go to and enter bogus info that seems legit on the surface! Imagine if they got 500 fake names and phone numbers for every good one! They'd immediately stop that route!
Assuming we do this to businesses that are CLEARLY spammers, what's the downside to this method?
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