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actually, it's pretty easy. do not hang up, do not yell, do not curse... very nicely say "please put this number on your company wide 'do not call' list". http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/telemarketing.htm l for a full explanation it works..

Hopefully, they won't actually start calling (oops, direct marketing) you on your cel phone. I rarely answer my phone at home for this very reason.

Actually, in the US, this is illegal. Anyone attempting to solicite you via your cell phone is liable for $500/per incident. See The restrictions telephone solicitation act over at the great Junkbusters site. Very interesting stuff.

I can't see why the e-mail spam of cell phone users should be treated any different than the actual phone call solicitation. Hopefully, Congress will wake up and realize that we need restictions on what a company can do to try to sell it's crap to you.

Hopefully, they won't actually start calling (oops, direct marketing) you on your cel phone. I rarely answer my phone at home for this very reason.

Actually, in the US, this is illegal. Anyone attempting to solicite you via your cell phone is liable for $500/per incident. See The restrictions telephone solicitation act over at the great Junkbusters site. Very interesting stuff.

I can't see why the e-mail spam of cell phone users should be treated any different than the actual phone call solicitation. Hopefully, Congress will wake up and realize that we need restictions on what a company can do to try to sell it's crap to you.

The people that got these messages may be in luck, to the tune of $500 USD. The TCPA bans automated calling of cell phones . It certainly seems as if this falls under this umbrella. I would certainly like to see this prosecuted.

It sets itself up as a proxy on your computer, and you have to configure netscape or IE to route through it, but it runs in the background and doesn't slow you down. It also hides the more obvious identification gizmos thrown at servers every time you request a page, and can be configured to prevent certain banners from loading (you get a broken image icon if it's just an image, and a "junkbusters" message if its in a layer).

It's free, it's small, it's simple and it seems to be making lots of people happy, although I don't use it because it disagrees with some of the proprietary software on my work computer.

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I know it's been said already, but I'm going to take a second to plug the Internet Junkbuster. It's free, easy to set up, and lets you block cookies and banner ads on either a "accept only these" basis, or a "accept all but these" basis. I started using it a few months ago, and I love it. I very rarely see a banner ad, except those on Slashdot, which I chose to leave allowed.

You can choose which sites can set cookies, e.g. Slashdot. Some sites like mail.com do require cookies to be set to function. This can be subverted by allowing the cookie to be set but not stored, by making the cookie file read only.

THere's an informative chapter on User Tracking at the Web Tools Review. Have a gander at Erik Rossen's advice in the Reader's Comments section at the article's end.

raw cod annoy sumo

Let ISP customers take responsibility.

And let's make it harder for web tracking and government sponsored invasions of privacy. Let's eliminate illegal acts of government spying and espionage by preventing them from doing it in the first place.

Most people have heard of the anonymizer to promote privacy. Well, you can do the same thing yourself with junkbuster by allowing others to use your proxy and eliminate doubleclick invasions at the same time.

>Several sites, such as junkbuster(s) [i don' know the spelling or url] give a long list of steps to get off various lists, including addresses.

http://www.junkbusters.com/


=================================

Cookies - Delete it and recreate a new unreadable cookies file.

Well, since you're posting on slashdot as a logged in user, you're obviously hypocritical on this one. Why not instead tell them to run something like junkbusters that'll actually let them control what cookies they want instead of just blindly and across-the-board killing them all?

Is there such a beast? This strikes me as the best way to deal with the problem - produce some software that does the job properly, and is open to peer review. Something like Junkbuster.

Pspeed dun said (while replying to someone):

Yeah, I have told him to take me off his list" Then he can be fined for continuing to call you. I wish I knew where to look this stuff up, but this was a big deal when I was working for a company that wrote auto-dialers for call centers.

Fined a good amount, at that--$500 per offense, $1500 per offense (if you can prove it was a willful offense--in other words, they knew damn well they were doing a Bad Thing and did it anyways).

Once you say the magic words "Please put me on your do not call list and send me a copy of your do not call policy", they are supposed to maintain your name on a do-not-call list for ten years, and they are supposed to provide a copy of the do-not-call policy on request. If they call you after you've requested to be put on a do-not-call list, or if they claim they don't have a list or policy, you have officially got them by the balls and can go directly to court and claim your $500 (or $1500, if you can show there's been a pattern of abuse of this kind with the company and people have successfully sued them under the law--ChemLawn and AT&T are fairly notorious for this).

In most states, $500-$1500 is small enough that you can actually file in small claims court--no lawyers required. If the company doesn't send someone to court, you can get a summary judgement and the judge can actually put a lien out on the company to pay you your money (even garnishing profits if necessary), because if they don't pay they are officially in contempt of court.

There is a very thorough page at Junkbusters, including a handy little script that lists literally EVERYTHING you can potentially screw a telemarketer over with on that law (not just refusing to put you on a do-not-call list, btw-- collection and/or telemarketing calls after 9 pm local time are also illegal, for starters). Needless to say, I do use the Junkbusters script, and telemarketers learn one way or another that when I say I don't want any bloody calls I damned well mean I don't want any calls, damnit :)=

You can set ~antibookmarks~ if you are using the antibanner GPL proxy Junkbuster.

Simply set in sblock.ini (regular expressions allowed) which sites must be blocked.
--

In Navigator you can stop animations once the page is loaded, using the ESC key.

I say that you DO have to regulate this trash. If you can't keep off-shore folfs from doing it then just keep off-shore sites off our internet. Place a great big firewall up and regualte what goes through it.

You really want the government telling you who you can and cannot connect to? Personally, that idea scares me. For one, it is just about the same thing as censorship. Sorry, but I don't want the government in that business.

You can setup your own proxy server or firewall to prevent such privacy invasions, however. I recommend The Internet Junkbuster; I set it up in like ten minutes the other day and it works great.

... what I really want to do is remove any and all info about me from their database. I'm sure they've used other methods to collect info on me, and I want it removed. What are my options?

Unfortunately, that information was likely collected using perfectly legal means, and is thus their property. You can control how they use it (e.g., stopping them from calling you to sell you things), but not the fact that they have it. You can usually tell them not to rent or sell your name, but I believe the law isn't clear on your rights in such cases.

Check out the Data About You page at JunkBusters.com for more information about this sort of thing.

... what I really want to do is remove any and all info about me from their database. I'm sure they've used other methods to collect info on me, and I want it removed. What are my options?

Unfortunately, that information was likely collected using perfectly legal means, and is thus their property. You can control how they use it (e.g., stopping them from calling you to sell you things), but not the fact that they have it. You can usually tell them not to rent or sell your name, but I believe the law isn't clear on your rights in such cases.

Check out the Data About You page at JunkBusters.com for more information about this sort of thing.

When I went to click on that opt-out link, I got a message saying the Internet JunkBuster had blocked that URL.

Aw, darn. ;-)

For me, it's more than not wanting them tracking me. I don't want to support a company that tracks people. That's why I installed the Internet Junkbuster, and I have it set to block anything from doubelick.net.

The Internet Junkbuster is a non-caching proxy that you run on your local computer. You tell it URL's to block and sites that you want to allow cookies from. It's really great. I can deny ads from doubleclick and any other company, as well as anything else I feel like blocking. It supports regexes for those that want them. I can allow cookies from Slashdot and deny them from everyone else.

Its about time those guys got taken down a peg or two. I've been filtering doubleclick out at my proxy server since I first noticed they were dropping cookies on each of their click-through ads. If you're after an easy way of blocking Doubleclick and others like them, check out Junkbusters They have filters for win95/98/nt and unix, as well as a generic faq on blocking cookies and banner ads.
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...many of us are willing to pay a few bucks for a good commercial tool when there's no open source alternative.

I don't have any problem with your endorsement (it is useful information, after all), but For Your Information, there is an Open Source product available that blocks banner ads, cookies, and such. Source available, no cost, and protected by the GPL, it is called "The Internet Junkbuster" and is available for free download from www.junkbusters.com. It functions as a proxy server, and guards your privacy.

Just FYI.

You may want to take a look at setting up a Junkbuster proxy server on your web browsing machine. There are proxies for *nix and Win32. I've set 'em up on my FreeBSD box, my NT box, and my Win98 box, then configured my web browsers to use the appropriate proxy. It's sweet!

The software package that I prefer using is junkbuster. It is an easy to set up web proxy server that runs on port 8000 ... it is extremely effective at blocking out banner ads, and it also has options for blocking out suspicious cookies, and preventing $HTTP_USER-type variables from being initialized.

It is unfortunate that we have to go to the trouble of installing these things, but the only cost of running it is the time it takes you to install the software. on the other hand, you'll be protecting your privacy as well as your bandwidth.

--

Rights in this Declaration Copying, redistribution, modification and production of derived works of this Declaration are permitted only under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The copyright of the expositional parts of this document is held by Junkbusters Corporation and is used here by permission under the GPL. This Declaration comes with no warranty. If clarification is needed refer first to the Guide to Interpretation of Declarations published by Junkbusters; for copies of that guide see www.junkbusters.com. Copies of the GPL are available there or from the Free Software Foundation, 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

So, although some posters have said that the GPL is inappropriate for documents, at least one document out there is GPLed. It is a net-based thing, tho'.

Rights in this Declaration Copying, redistribution, modification and production of derived works of this Declaration are permitted only under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The copyright of the expositional parts of this document is held by Junkbusters Corporation and is used here by permission under the GPL. This Declaration comes with no warranty. If clarification is needed refer first to the Guide to Interpretation of Declarations published by Junkbusters; for copies of that guide see www.junkbusters.com. Copies of the GPL are available there or from the Free Software Foundation, 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

So, although some posters have said that the GPL is inappropriate for documents, at least one document out there is GPLed. It is a net-based thing, tho'.

Rights in this Declaration Copying, redistribution, modification and production of derived works of this Declaration are permitted only under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The copyright of the expositional parts of this document is held by Junkbusters Corporation and is used here by permission under the GPL. This Declaration comes with no warranty. If clarification is needed refer first to the Guide to Interpretation of Declarations published by Junkbusters; for copies of that guide see www.junkbusters.com. Copies of the GPL are available there or from the Free Software Foundation, 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

So, although some posters have said that the GPL is inappropriate for documents, at least one document out there is GPLed. It is a net-based thing, tho'.

Rights in this Declaration Copying, redistribution, modification and production of derived works of this Declaration are permitted only under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The copyright of the expositional parts of this document is held by Junkbusters Corporation and is used here by permission under the GPL. This Declaration comes with no warranty. If clarification is needed refer first to the Guide to Interpretation of Declarations published by Junkbusters; for copies of that guide see www.junkbusters.com. Copies of the GPL are available there or from the Free Software Foundation, 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

So, although some posters have said that the GPL is inappropriate for documents, at least one document out there is GPLed. It is a net-based thing, tho'.

Every corporate website would employ the olfactory equivalent of Muzak -- some superficial focus grouped scent of productivity and profit, mixed with some twinge of dynamism and excitement. Evil h4x0rs would break in and replace these smell files with the smell of pot (doubt that? Check the attrition hacked-sites archive and count the pot references).

We would receive spam offering us the usual "free pics delivered daily to your email box," augmented with "wee wiff of quim in the morning" offerings no discriminating connosieur (sp) could resist. [Rob Roy reference]

Mailbombs would become messier affairs.

Valentine's day (easy). cron jobs that produce the smell of toast and coffee (or other apropriate cues) at the right times of day.

Rather than spraying an aerosol about whilst cleaning a bathroom, you'd send mail to the e-toilet.

I pity those who got their moderator points on this one. :)

That's what false contact information and JunkBuster is for! Did I mention it also keeps Netscape from ignoring its UI event queue while doing DNS lookups? It's fun for a girl and a boy.

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That's media's weak point. Media exists to be consumed - otherwise, it fails, both in purpose and financially.

Children have no immunity. They are hard-wired to absorb everything that surrounds them, and it helps form the neural passageways that make them who they are. This is where parents can have an effect, by directing the children's senses to correct things. Even a little proding will result in positive effects, and the children will seek out more for themselves.

As they become older, they become better consumers, realizing a little how the media sources are not always benevolent. I remember as early as grade school being taught the basics of advertising, and how effective techniques (bandwagon, celebrity endorsement, etc.) are not always logically consistant. Kids should probably get a media class early in life, the earlier the better.

Soon, the tricks become transparent. They recognize simple trends (Gap trying to make products look cool, Coke associating their product with a catchy tune), and they become less effective. Media that once worked becomes less effective (remember the Hanna-Barbara shorts that were always the same? Hawkman confronts enemy, gets caught, bird saves, Hawkman is victorious. Or how about the fill-in-the-blank Scooby Doo plots?). Even when the media recognizes the consumer is getting smarter, they still have a hard time (Sprite still tries celebrity endorsement, but refers to the fact that they are doing it, and it hasn't worked on me yet).

Eventually, we become the Regulons. We walk out of the room during commercials. We play drinking games around product placement. We buy the same product for less at the off-brand store. We create content, instead of consuming it. We create products like the TiVo to eliminate comercials, or SlashDot, which bars the most annoying of ads.

They try harder and harder (creating Java game commercials, million-dollar superbowl spots, advertisements on bannanas, chalk drawings), but we get smarter and smarter. They will survive, since there is always the unaware to fall into the trap, but there are some predators out there, and some of them have a moral obligation to educate others.

Why not join us?

This is not re-broadcasting, simply browsing existing published information using a different interface.

Publishing content on a web site is an implicit admission that the publisher does not control the means of viewing the content, since the publisher has no control over the browser. One of the main purposes of a markup language like HTML is to provide hints, but not dictate how content is presented.

In this case, using XML to scrape another web site for selected information could be viewed as browser behaviour. Another example of this occurs if the user has intelligently installed the internet junkbuster proxy which removes advertising content. Since these sites sell space to banner advertisers the same argument can be made.

Do you still have the right to switch the TV off during a commercial break in the US ?
David Schenks book Data Smog is well worth a read, if you are concerned about web sites forcing unwanted content on you...

And if they call again in violation of that, you just made an easy five hundred bucks.

Visit Junkbusters to learn more.

You can do a lot to fight spam. Junkbusters has a site devoted to getting these intrusions out of our lives. I've used their anti-junk snailmail system, and it really does work well. They've also got a nice page on stopping computer UBE crud, too.

Personally, I never hide my mail address. It's dishonest, and, technically, against the rules. My real address, tchrist@perl.com, is sitting right here in this message, on the header for this comment, and is also posted in a hundred thousand different places--if not more. But you know what? I don't see much spam. I auto-bounce at least fifty pieces of spam per day. And most days, not more than a couple make it through -- but only once.

Some of them get bounced using sendmail's anti-spam features. I'm a big fan of the Realtime Blackhole List, which sendmail can be configured to access.

Some spammage get bounced because the sender is on my own blacklist of forbidden addresses, which lately includes things like /\b\d+\.net/. Others are bounced because they look like spam, or because they're mime-encrypted. This is all taken care of by a custom receiving program, plus some other scripts to dynamically update the blacklist.

I don't automatically bounce mail that violates reasonable netiquette, but I do have a periodic posting about the idiotic Jeopardy mail.

And yes, now and then a few innocent men are sent to the gallows. This is the price we pay on the war against spam. If it's important, they'll figure out another way to mail me.

You can do a lot to fight spam. Junkbusters has a site devoted to getting these intrusions out of our lives. I've used their anti-junk snailmail system, and it really does work well. They've also got a nice page on stopping computer UBE crud, too.

Personally, I never hide my mail address. It's dishonest, and, technically, against the rules. My real address, tchrist@perl.com, is sitting right here in this message, on the header for this comment, and is also posted in a hundred thousand different places--if not more. But you know what? I don't see much spam. I auto-bounce at least fifty pieces of spam per day. And most days, not more than a couple make it through -- but only once.

Some of them get bounced using sendmail's anti-spam features. I'm a big fan of the Realtime Blackhole List, which sendmail can be configured to access.

Some spammage get bounced because the sender is on my own blacklist of forbidden addresses, which lately includes things like /\b\d+\.net/. Others are bounced because they look like spam, or because they're mime-encrypted. This is all taken care of by a custom receiving program, plus some other scripts to dynamically update the blacklist.

I don't automatically bounce mail that violates reasonable netiquette, but I do have a periodic posting about the idiotic Jeopardy mail.

And yes, now and then a few innocent men are sent to the gallows. This is the price we pay on the war against spam. If it's important, they'll figure out another way to mail me.

Freedom can not co-exist with a PC firewall. Period. Their tech support says that the Freedom client "is" a firewall, but where's the traffic log? An independent review of Freedom's performancer as a firewall, from a certifying body with respectable credentials, is the only thing that would make me consider Freedom a secure network application.

Freedom's routing system does not remix, which means that pinpointing a given user is a fairly linear process, well within the means of, for example, a repressive State.

Closed source proprietary payware. Is that three bad words or four? But seriously, I would trust it a lot more if the source was open and independently reviewed.

As I said, I would consider the Freedom client and service a *lot* better than nothing, especially for the non-technical user; but I personally prefer having a real firewall and the Internet Junkbuster local proxy: Real intrusion resistance plus powerful anti-tracking functions. Lotsa Slashdot fans will like knowing that IJB is available for Unix and OS/2 as well as Windoze, is open source, and is under GNU public liscence.

BTW, I post as an anonymous coward because all the good pseudonyms are taken.

:o))

if you want a cookie filter, get a cookie filter program. if you want a newsgroup reader, get a newsgroup reading program. if you want an email client, get an email client.
it seems netscape has not learned from their mistakes -- i don't want the damn kitchen sink in my web browser. it's like emacs all over again. next thing you know, they'll have an entire office suite, a 3d modeller, and a java ide in there.
btw, junkbuster works great for cookie filtering :)

Most systems store them in a readable format on your harddrive. Yeah, that kinda sucks. The storage has to be plaintext-equivalent, if not actually plaintext. What should browsers do, xor your cookie with susageP the way WinCE does with passwords?

Someday all net transmissions will be encrypted anyway.

Even discounting the substantial performance and political problems that stand in the way of that, that will still never happen. There's no reason to encrypt all communications, and it's not even technically possible in all cases.

Intel would love to use a CPU ID to help us. This has so many problems that I'm just not going to go into it. But it would work.

It would work for everyone with a Pentium-III and an OS/browser combination that is aware of it. As long as only one user ever uses the computer. The processor-ID scheme is flawed even if you ignore privacy problems altogether.

Some sort of third party big brother handling authentication.

On that, we agree. Uh, what, so I'm going to trust Novell with all of my information?

Now, what is really wrong with cookies. They're a substantial invasion of privacy, and they're being used to establish local and global click-trails. Allowing cookies only from the same site as the current page alleviates the problem sort of. Using Junkbuster can solve it entirely (and help you block ad banners!).

And what's really wrong with the Schmidt and most of the other people who whine about the insecurity of cookies: they don't get it. Odds are that his credit card number was not stored in the cookie. Even if it was, someone who gets access to arbitrary files on his computer can do a lot worse than steal one credit card number. People blame cookies when the real culprit is One-Click Shopping (patented!) and its ilk, which make a cookie a credit-card equivalent. Dumb, dumb -- you need per-session state for shopping carts and permanent state for preferences, but using permanent state for shopping carts is asking for trouble. Hooray for Amazon.

And hooray for the Internet Junkbuster.

I love Junkbusters, it lets you specify only the domains that you trust with your cookies, and filters out the rest. If you don't like the idea of arbitrary web sites tracking your every move (the eyes, the eyes), don't like all the 'accept this cookie' windows that pop up when you have the confirm option on in Netscape, and still want /. to auto-log you in, you should check it out.

Also, it lets me tell everyone that the web-browser I'm using is 'Flipper the web-surfing goat (C64 edition)' ;-)

God, that sounded to much like an advert, btw you can it from here.

Now, if you delete your cookies on a daily basis, is that enough to screw doubleclick? Sure they get a days worth of data on you, but can they correlate it with data collected under another cookie? I used to do this periodically and never knew how well it worked.

Of course, thanks to Junkbuser, this is a moot point now. For those of you who aren't running Junkbuster GET IT NOW. Pages load about twice as fast because you dont have to wait for laggy-ass banner servers. You can keep your blessed slashdot cookies while telling doubleclick to sod off. Plus, its pretty transparent once its installed.

-BW

This should help reduce the amount of junk mail and telemarketing calls you receive although I still receive telemarketing calls for local charities.

Unfortunately, I'm probably going to have to do this again since I'm planning on moving to a smaller apartment closer to downtown in a few months.

Been a while since I was at their site, but I recall that Junkbusters has a lot of this information. Reminds me that I want to go there and opt out of every credit card list (can we say identity theft waiting to happen? Thought you could...).

The thing that really freaks me about these databases is that you know people you don;t want to get access to them will get access to them. Imagine a pair of burglers casing a neighborhood... a net-connected PDA and access to this database would be all they need to choose a victim. "Letsee... this house here, yearly income $250,000... single female... bought lots of jewelry recently... just had a credit card activity several states away... let's go for it..." Sure, sure, peole like this won't be allowed to access the information. Yeah, right.

... and which incidentally identify them uniquely and provide assorted marketing information. The end of anonymity, coming soon to a Web near you.

Anyone who values their right to privacy should find this extremely disturbing. If you use common browsers such as IE or Netscape, every time you visit a site the browser gives the site a lot of information that you would probably prefer kept private, such as how many pages you've viewed, what link you clicked to get there, and so forth. Some web sites push cookies at you, don't provide information as to what the cookies are for, and use information obtained from the cookies to target marketing crap at you. And even though the cookie standard specifies that only the issuing site can retrieve the cookies they push, several organisations that use cookies for marketing are forging agreements to trade this cookie information freely with each other, thus indirectly violating the cookie standard, and ensuring that if you visit any of their sites, then your details will be traded to all of them without your knowledge or consent.

My personal information is my private property. Some of the personal information I have, I have to pay for. I pay to have a telephone number. I pay to rent a flat. I pay to have a driver's licence. Why should corporations take my personal details from me for free, then sell it for a profit without my knowledge, without my consent and without giving me a hefty percentage of the take? I have given serious consideration to asking any company that requires my personal details to sign an EULA that severely restricts how they use this information, including a ban on selling or trading the information (except where they are required by law to do so, of course). I want to take back control of my personal details. I don't want my residential address to be a tradable commodity. I don't want my Net access habits to be sold to anyone. I value my privacy, and I will defend it.

If anything needs to be licensed on the Net, it is not the users. It is those organisations that require your personal information for any reason, those organisations that use cookies as a means to target marketing information, those organisations whose sites are unusable unless you have Javascript AND cookies enabled, those organisations that require you to register or provide your e-mail address to access their site, and so forth. The terms of such license should require such sites to display prominently a privacy statement on their home page that informs users EXACTLY how their details will be used by the site, so users can opt out anonymously before accessing the site if they so wish.

For more information, visit www.junkbusters.com/.

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I just loaded it under Opera 3.60 on Win98 with no problems. It did point out that I'm missing RealPlayer G2 and Macromedia Flash Player though.

Loading under IE5 on Win95 (I have to VNC for the Opera machine) it installed VB Scripting and still provided the same message. The only difference I could see between the two was the extra colours because I was VNCing in 8bit mode.

Now linux: VNC in 8 bit mode again (Netscape 4.51/Export). I certainly see what you mean, it tells me this.

I especially love the button on the bottom of that page ("Return to fox.com - just bounces you back again!)

Tried changing the User Agent string (using junkbuster) to Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98) without success. Looked at the code and noticed that it's all done with Javascript. Turned off javascript - now the document "contains no data".

Decided I don't really want to see fox.comanyway!

Oh - lynx version 2.8.1rel.2 just gives [EMBED] for / and blank for /frameset.html.

Ok, here goes.. stop winging and just get junkbuster .

• By the time you receive the e-mail, resources that cost real money to install, use and maintain have been consumed to send the message to you. Thus, the spammer has effectively stolen from various places on the 'Net.
• You have to spend your own time to discard the junk. Could that time be better used by you earning money? Do you place a monetary value on your own time? If so, then the spammer has stolen from you as well.
• If spammers felt that "just delete it" was an appropriate response if their spam was unwanted, then they would make it easy to filter the spam automatically. A few actually do this by putting "ADV:" or something similar in the subject. However, the majority of spammers don't want their message deleted, and some go as far as putting misleading subjects in the message to make you think it's from someone you know so you have to read the message, e.g.: "Info you requested" and "Hi, remember me?".
• Can you delete your way through 50, 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000 spams a day? If nothing is done about stopping spam, the volume of spam will only increase to the point where e-mail is no longer a usable resource for the 'Net community. Spammers, by spamming, are destroying the usefulness of the resources that they exploit.

• Electronic mail is not a broadcast medium. E-mail is meant to be a communication between two people, not a means by which a dysfunctional individual can spew junk all over the 'Net.
• Spamming is not a legitimate form of advertising. If spam was a legitimate form of advertising, then reputable business would be using it. Legitimate businesses do not generally use spam to advertise.

• It is now illegal in some jurisdictions (Washington State, USA, for example) to send e-mail with forged headers or misleading subject lines.
• Forging the headers of an e-mail message may also constitute fraud in jurisdictions without explicit anti-spam laws. Fraud is a criminal offence.
• Sending pornographic spam to minors is almost certainly illegal, regardless of whether it contains a disclaimer stating that "you must be over 18 to view this" or words to that effect. Would you leave the Kama Sutra on your coffee table at home, but tell your kids that you must be over 18 to read it? Sending pornographic spam to an Australian resident may also be illegal after 1 January, 2000, when the Online Services amendments to the Telecommunications Act come into force.
• Advertising of any product or service is subject to laws that regulate truth in advertising. Making up testimonials is illegal. Claims that are false are illegal. Lying in advertising is illegal.
• Pyramid scams and other similar "Get-rich-quick" schemes are illegal.
• Asking people to send cash through the post is probably illegal.
• Using resources that other people have paid for is regarded by many as theft. Theft is a criminal offence.

• LART FAQ
• Death to Spam
• JunkBusters home page with a link to their Spam page

• By the time you receive the e-mail, resources that cost real money to install, use and maintain have been consumed to send the message to you. Thus, the spammer has effectively stolen from various places on the 'Net.
• You have to spend your own time to discard the junk. Could that time be better used by you earning money? Do you place a monetary value on your own time? If so, then the spammer has stolen from you as well.
• If spammers felt that "just delete it" was an appropriate response if their spam was unwanted, then they would make it easy to filter the spam automatically. A few actually do this by putting "ADV:" or something similar in the subject. However, the majority of spammers don't want their message deleted, and some go as far as putting misleading subjects in the message to make you think it's from someone you know so you have to read the message, e.g.: "Info you requested" and "Hi, remember me?".
• Can you delete your way through 50, 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000 spams a day? If nothing is done about stopping spam, the volume of spam will only increase to the point where e-mail is no longer a usable resource for the 'Net community. Spammers, by spamming, are destroying the usefulness of the resources that they exploit.

• Electronic mail is not a broadcast medium. E-mail is meant to be a communication between two people, not a means by which a dysfunctional individual can spew junk all over the 'Net.
• Spamming is not a legitimate form of advertising. If spam was a legitimate form of advertising, then reputable business would be using it. Legitimate businesses do not generally use spam to advertise.

• It is now illegal in some jurisdictions (Washington State, USA, for example) to send e-mail with forged headers or misleading subject lines.
• Forging the headers of an e-mail message may also constitute fraud in jurisdictions without explicit anti-spam laws. Fraud is a criminal offence.
• Sending pornographic spam to minors is almost certainly illegal, regardless of whether it contains a disclaimer stating that "you must be over 18 to view this" or words to that effect. Would you leave the Kama Sutra on your coffee table at home, but tell your kids that you must be over 18 to read it? Sending pornographic spam to an Australian resident may also be illegal after 1 January, 2000, when the Online Services amendments to the Telecommunications Act come into force.
• Advertising of any product or service is subject to laws that regulate truth in advertising. Making up testimonials is illegal. Claims that are false are illegal. Lying in advertising is illegal.
• Pyramid scams and other similar "Get-rich-quick" schemes are illegal.
• Asking people to send cash through the post is probably illegal.
• Using resources that other people have paid for is regarded by many as theft. Theft is a criminal offence.

• LART FAQ
• Death to Spam
• JunkBusters home page with a link to their Spam page

There most certainly are cases where it is very nice to have something like Junkbuster= and/or Squid in between me and remote places, as both can help keep things a bit more anonymous.

I'm looking forward to cable modems being more ubiquitous; this will mandate having personal firewall machines, and this will encourage the development of little easily-managed boxes to help with such.

Little Linux boxes would be perfect candidates for this sort of thing; a minimal distribution that has some proxying software, and something like Linuxconf or COAS that can be configured remotely through a secure connection (e.g. SSL) would be a killer app.

Internet JUNKBUSTER will solve your problem.

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