[MadIvan]

I don't like spam.

Regards, Ivan

[MadIvan]

Bump!

[Cicero]

Well, I couldn't agree more that something needs to be done. A completely free internet was a nice idea, but spam, especially pornographic spam, needs to be controlled.

[agarrett]

But while the ISPs have started to fight back, professional spammers are notoriously hard to track down. Some believe that the billions of spam e-mails emanate from just 150 shadowy companies, programming computers to randomly generate names and fire off mail by the million, 24 hours a day.

  I've heard this line before, linked to how difficult these people are to trace, and I've never quite understood it. Some one has to hire these companies to fire off the spam in the first place. Even if, somehow, only those who want to issue spam can find these people, we know who is hiring them, because they have their identity on the spam mails. Can't we get the contact information from those companies?

  I just don't see why finding these spammers should be so difficult, I suppose.

Drew Garrett

[Dog Gone]

Spam should be made illegal. The advertisers First Amendment rights end somewhere outside of my internet mailbox.

[agitator]

Spammers must die. I think they should be tied to a mail box at the bottom of a cliff and then have 5 tractor trailer loads of bulk mail dumped on them from 500 feet.

[toast]

“It takes up an inordinate amount of time just clearing them out,” he laments.

Whiner. I can get rid of 20 spam emails in 30 seconds. Its very easy to tell by the subject and author.

[JoeSchem]

Bill Gates had a suggestion in his book, The Road Ahead: that we charge people for the privilege of e-mailing us. Basically, if someone wanted to send you e-mail, they would have to pay about a dime to you before your account would accept it. Of course, the money transfers would have to be done automatically, from ISP to ISP, but technologically speaking, it could be done.

The basic idea is, a dime wouldn't stop your friends and family from sending you e-mail. But it would stop Mister Penile Enlargement from sending out ten million e-mails when he expects to get back only ten replies. That works when the e-mails are free, but when they cost $1 million and he only stands to make $100, he'll think again about darkening your virtual doorstep.

[snopercod]

My ISP filters all e-mails and holds all "span" for a yes-or-no by me. So far I only delete about five per week, but my neighbor deletes hundreds per day. I attribute the difference to the fact that I never visit porno sites and he does.

[Mike Darancette]

What bugs me more than E-Mail Spam is the pop ups and ads.

Drudge is using something called ads.doubleclick in his HTML that just hangs my computer because it is so slow. Other sites like Intellicast (weather) are using it too.

[giotto]

The solution will have to be a technological one,

Not necessarily. Why is spam so abundant? Because it costs almost nothing to send. What if, rather than imposing all kinds of laws, we simply imposed a postage fee on e-mail? For example, it would cost $.05 to send a message and nothing to receive it. How many e-mails does the average person send in a week? I'm probably not average, because I don't send a lot of e-mail, but I'll bet that few people send more than 10 e-mails per day. The ISP could allow each user to send mail at no charge to a user supplied list of people. This would lower the cost considerably. It would be easy to add names to the list. If the user begins to send mail to an unfamiliar address, the program could ask him if he wants to add the address to his list of free addresses, and even if he never plans to write them again, he could add it. There would also have to be safeguards to prevent spammers from illegally using someone else's account to send spam.

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

I AM SICK OF SPAM AND SPAM POP-UPS!!!

I feel better,thanks.

[AgThorn]

[AgThorn]

It's not bad with eggs ...

[Hildy]

As a woman, I must ask the question...is penile enhancement THAT big of a business? (Excuse the pun). I get like at least three offers a day.

[mrfixit514]

When I click on view and privacy report when I am viewing this thread I get one that says freerepublic but I also get four more. For example on is arobase.org/spam

what does that mean?

[JCG]

The net, says Wyatt, is in its “spotty, adolescent phase” and needs to grow up — in particular it needs a global governing body to monitor and legislate for acceptable online practice.

But, of course -- and with Hillary Clinton in charge. Sorry, this cure is worse than the disease.

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8Mb File Here (Requires RealPlayer)

Who is Steve Emerson?

[Fury]

The 'Net won't choke. There is adequate bandwidth now, and ample infrastructure which will be sufficient to address future needs.

One of the primary metrics that interactive customers use to measure their Internet experience is response time. If web pages load slow, customers will complain.

The problem is that for many users, all traffic to/from most ISPs was/still is treated the same. Web-browsing, Voice/IP, H.323 (Video/IP), etc. will show the adverse effects of response time degradation more so than e-mail.

More and more ISP's and larger users of the Internet will be using traffic-shaping, and other technologies and standards to address Internet response time issues. The issue of spam is different - it can be best be addresed by content filtering technologies and black-holing.

[HairOfTheDog]

I have probably gotten a *total* 5 or 6 unsolicited emails in my whole life. I have signed up for newsletters, and when I tired of them, unregistered, and they stopped.

I am baffled because I don't hide my email address either.

I enroll or register at whatever sites I choose, using some discretion, read the enrollment questions and answer "no" to offers to send me email, and so far they don't. I still only have and use only one email address, and have used it a few years now.

But it isn't a freebie address, but one provided by my cable ISP. Is that really the only difference between me and a victim? - I don't get why people can't avoid spam without fancy filter programs. I have none.

[Lockbar]

[Eric Cassano]

I use the "message filter" function in Netscape and it works pretty good. I still take a quick glance over the rejects before deleting them. Pre-sorting the e-mail allows me to speed up the spam delete process if nothing else.

I'm tempted to give out a password or code to my friends and frequent e-mailers to include in their e-mail "body" or "subject line". Then set up a filter allowing only those e-mails to go into my in-box. Maybe change the password occasionally if necessary. This strategy doesn't solve the problem of spam clogging up the internet however.