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more on Start-Up Aims to End Spam
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 10:49:09 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org> Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 10:42:21 -0500 To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Re: [IP] Start-Up Aims to End Spam On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 10:14:07AM -0500, Dave Farber wrote:
I am at a loss to see how this is different from others like it. Djf
It's not. And it's important to note that it does NOTHING to "end spam"; the aount of spam sent by spammers and the load it imposes on mail servers is completely unaffected by this. (Spammers don't care about bounces: they send by the millions, using either dedicated servers or hijacked relays/proxies, so there's no reason for them to care. They also don't care about which mail servers they send to or even correctly using the SMTP protocol: their only goal is to maximize the message count.) It's also worth noting that -- unless I misunderstand how this system works, which is certainly possible -- that it would be impossible for blind users, difficult for people who can't understand the [English] instructions, requires web access to deliver mail (VERY bad idea), and may impose a single point-of-failure on a mail system which has been deliberately built to function in a distributed manner. (I can also think of one or two simple ways to effectively disable this service, but I'm not going to share those. However, if I can think of them, so can spammers.) Internet users who are actually interested in *stopping* spam rather than merely wallpapering over it are best served by participating in boycotts of spam-supporting ISPs, thus isolating them from the portion of the Internet which doesn't tolerate spam and depriving them of their ill-gotten gains from providing services to spammers. Excellent (and copious) information on these can be found at any of these: http://www.spamhaus.org/ http://www.spews.org/ http://www.spamfaq.net/ http://spam.abuse.net/ among many other places, all of which can be found by traversing links on those sites. It's become very clear in the last 1-2 years that significant economic pressure applied to pro-spam/pro-abuse ISPs can, in some cases, cause them to behave more responsibly and to cooperate with the Internet community in removing spam and spammers. It's often a painfully slow process, but it does have the merit of attacking the problem at its source -- and thus it's the only process that's likely to work. ---Rsk ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on Start-Up Aims to End Spam Dave Farber (Mar 24)