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Counting The Cost Of Spam
Bender Unit 22 writes: "According to a study by the EU Commission, spam costs over 10 billion euro (1 euro is about 0,92$) a year worldwide. The study's analysis of e-mail marketing concentrates on the US market. The commision have made a proposal to update the 'directive on data protection and privacy' in the telecommunications sector. This proposal favours the opt-in approach. Today, opt-ins are required in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Germany."
You should have carried your back of hand calculations one step furthure: $300,000 * 365 = $109,500,000
This is bull, just like the kevin mitnick case where he was labeled as causing so much damage. The truth is it doesn't cost any money..How can you pin all development costs on spam alone?? its just bull..
stupid me! note to self: always preview...
You should have carried your back of hand calculations one step furthure: $300,000 * 365 = $109,500,000 less then 10e9. (or is it a british billion 10e12?) Your estimate is off by 100 times. As my math prof once said: "that is a lot of wiggle room."
"Perfect solution"? What's perfect about ME having to pay (in money and time) for YOUR advertising? And you dare mention capitalism? Where is it a part of capitalism to have the right to advertise for free and without giving your audience the choice whether they want to receive your ads AND PAY FOR THEM? Please.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Yeah, and the computers run on what energy source? Magic?
Postal mail advertisers actually pay for the delivery and other expenses incurred by third parties.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Please consider: TV advertising pays for the TV shows I watch - that much is true. Print advertising reduces the cost of the magazines. But spam does not - in any way - pay for the email I send or receive! I pay my ISP for that. My ISP, in turn, gets no revenue at all from the spammed advertising - quite the opposite - they also bear the costs of routing, filtering and storing the spam.
Spam doesn't compare in any way to legit TV or print advertising. It would - only if it were possible for a spam company to sneakily inject their adverts into a TV station's programming without paying that TV station for carrying the adverts.
Your argument is therefore utterly bogus.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Funny. My filters halt about 10-15 pieces of spam per day. This has gone on for about 4 years now. Not a single "targeted" or "useful" commercial email among them.
And where did you get the notion that spam funds bandwidth?
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
The thing that bugs me is that there is advertising email that I want to get. I want advertising that tells me about products that I'm interested in, and new things that are happening. I don't want anything else. Since I can't block out the masses, I just delete everything that remotely looks like advertising.
Spam is commercial speech; the political candidate to which you refer is engaging in political speech. Commercial speech in the US is not afforded the same degree of first-amendment protection as is political speech.
Curtains for windows?
I have to agree that banner ads are the commercials of the internet (while I would include legit, closed loop advertisement emails or newsletters).
Spam (UCE), is more analagous to driving down the street with a 6 meter amplifier broadcasting your commercial on a popular channel, overpowering the legit station on that channnel. Or perhaps renting lots of tapes at Blockbuster/Hollywood/local video rental store and taping your commercial over parts of the movie.
funny munging
Spammers and spam sofware companys
pay goto.com per click thru
some pay over $3 per click
search for bulk e mail on goto.com
and you will see for your self
or follow the limk in my sig. for more info
http://Lenny.com
Oh yeah, and anyone who gets a fill-in-the-blanks spam letter to send out and gives their name as "fsdfk" should be shot in the head just on principle.
Porn doesn't inflict itself on the recipient, wasting his time and resources. You have to actively seek it out. Or are you counting the costs of legal prosecution?
Because...
you will owe us $10000 (adjust the currency symbol and amount as needed) per incident.
Courts would rule this unreasonable and strike it down.
If you fail to pay, we WILL destroy your credit rating,
Non-payment to one company will not destroy your credit.
we WILL garnish your pay,
Employers only listen to courts and the IRS to do this.
we WILL charge you 5% interest per month
That would put you over 22% per year, which is roughly the unofficial limit for credit. Again, courts would strike it down as unreasonable.
and we WILL make your physical address and name public on our 'Spammers Hall of Shame' page.
Said ISP would get sued (and in some parts of the country the plantiff would win) for slander.
----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
There are a couple of flaws in your commentary. First, an ISP (in the US) can terminate a user's service for any reason, so the addition of "ADV:" would not create a legal challenge to this. Second, spam does have a much higher response rate than you are estimating. It's probably about equal to that of a postal bulk mailing, which is 2%. It's enough of a response to motivate spam.
It essentially comes down to the fact that, in the case of most spam runs, there is a percentage of business leads generated. This is why spam will not go away of its own accord.
On the "penalties" note, most spammers just move from ISP to ISP. Charging them an administrative fee for spamming doesn't work, the spammers typically dispute the credit card charges. I saw the dispute paperwork for one spammer at an ISP I worked at and there were 10 charges from 10 ISPs in a 30 day period and the guy was disputing all of them. Without a signature, the complainant always wins.
maru
If you are selling a product on the internet, you don't need banner ads. You are already selling the product to make money, duh!
Corporate websites make money from their product. There's where the money comes from to establish their informational websites.
Everyone else, like me, create pages with information because they have something to share, and want to do so.
Spam and banner ads are unneeded. Get over it. I seem to recall a very nice internet surviving without all that crap before 1994. And ya know what? It was a better place.
There is a problem with this survey. You have the SPA saying that piracy costs $$$billions in sales. You have the RIAA saying that MP3 and Napster costs $$$billions in sales. You have the MPAA claiming that DeCSS costs them $$$billions because everyone is copying DVDs and putting them online. They claim that each copy means a sale lost, but we know that many of the copies would not translate into sales/losses. How did the EU study calculate losses?
Fight Spammers!
Yes yes, the internet was a horrid wasteland before spam, thank the lord that spam came along to save the internet.
Just a point of clarification: before targeted, useful commercial e-mail became the norm, the Internet was a curiosity that was visited upon by tens of thousands of academics and professionals with mainframe accounts. Today, there are millions of people on the Internet. It is ridiculous to suggest that the bandwidth required to sustain those millions could be funded using the same sources as when the Internet was an obscure network that 99.99% of the population had never even heard of.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
You, sir, are an apologist for spammers, a troll, or worse, somewhat daffy.
...I'm supposed to click on banner ads and read all commercial email... 'cuz I might get a hell of a deal... ever get suckered into a time-share pitch?
Do you really think that spam is necessary, a benefit, one of the 'costs of doing business'? I certainly don't. Spam can be generated by any sixth-grade kid with a TRS-80. It is not the equivalent of advertising, and it is not a 'necessary evil'.
It's time that people either learn to accept reality, or get off the Internet.
Well, that settles it: Flamebait. I'm giving up the chance to mod you down because I want to respond to this, even though I know I am being goaded. It's fun to take this a point at a time.
Spam is not a derogatory term, or you have never heard of a derogatory term. The reference to Monty Python is actually an attempt to disarm the agony of spam with humor. Hubris, if you will. The term "junk mail" is derogatory, however.
Spam is not commercials of the internet. Banner Ads are. Spam is an abuse of the system, taking advantage of a service that has no limits, until people are forced to put limits on the system, making everyone else suffer due to the actions of a few (it's been that way ever since 4th grade gym class).
The basic principles of the free market are not anarchy. There is a code, and spammers violate it.
You talk like the government should not tell businesses how to conduct themselves. The line about the govt being offensive indicates that your relationship with reality is tenuous at best. Hell, I gotta quote it:
The notion that the government should step in and place restrictions on how business should be run is offensive.
That is the governments job. It may be offensive to spammers, but its not nearly as offensive as some internet practices.
Banning Spam != Repealing the First Amendment.
heh, now its my duty to participate in the 'advertising process". I'm sorry, can you contain your spittle as you type this stuff? It is just too too funny.
...anti-spammers are anti-business
...spam is the lifeblood of America
...spam is one of the capitalist principles of a free market
...spam-hating was a fad
...a tiny minority of Americans want to ban spam
...anti-spammers are communists
Thanks. Even though I have been had, I feel like I have been had by one of the best, guy. You really take the cake. What a brilliant exercise in sarcasm!
Thanks for the laugh. It may be on me, but hopefully you have pre-empted any posters who even remotely believe any of the nonsense You posted.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Since spam itself does not help support the infrastructure of the internet like TV, Radio, Newpapers, etc ... ads do it is a problem. It takes up (unfairly) people's time and computer resources. Not to mention that of the ISP and backbone providers.
I have to believe that most all of the numbers that are floating around out there are based on hypotheticals and conjecture (as well as a little hopefulness [is that a word?] to sway people into thinking that the figure has some sort of real significance).
Or maybe ma bell was telling the truth
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
Costs of storage and transmission are only the beginning. From my point of view the most serious cost is loss of time spent dealing with spam in my mailbox. I have to clean it out or I have to go to the trouble to erect some kind of barrier between the spammer and my mailbox.
My time is not free for other people to waste!
That's one business Microsoft can have and welcome. At least we would know who to blame.
And then every mail server admin blocks ADV:, which would make spamming with ADV: useless.
So the spammers stop using ADV:.
One cost effective method for dealing with spammers would be to take them out back and shoot 'em.
Note that my cost estimate covers the cost of a bullet, not legal expenses. There is a real risk of legal consequences for this type of action, but if enough victims rise up in arms the courts will be jammed with cases and appeals for years. It's likely that the ACLU and various charitable organizations would help defray your legal fees. Most sensible juries would render a verdict of justifiable homicide. On balance, I think many people would consider the risks worthwhile. After all, you get the satisfaction of knowing you did your bit to make the world a nicer place to live.
Thats why we should all fight back
hurt the spammers it's the only way
http://Lenny.com
I don't. Contrary to popular belief, the internet is not your corporate playground. If you can't make it in the real world without resorting to spam, then you'd better find yourself another career.
ObMontyPython: "Well I wasn't expecting a kind of spammish imposition."
-Legion
(Better known as "spam.")
-Legion
In my last comment I calculated that if everyone received as much spam as me, it would cost 150Million/year. I am quite sure there has been a mistake in this report. This still doesn't mean it is not a problem. It is atleast a nuicence I can do without!
Perhaps there are costs that are far in excess to the costs of the technical aspect of receiving spam. Perhaps if you count the losses caused by malicious competitors using spam against other companies, making people think a particular company sent it, maybe then it is 1000x more?
Let me ask you a question then, If I spend $50 USD on a P.O. Box and recieve only 10 pieces of junkmail then does that mean that each piece of junkmail cost me $5? And furthermore am I entitled to pursue the $50? What about the money I spend travelling to and from the P.O. Box? My Time sorting through it? My disposal fees? If a T1 costs $50 and I recieve 10 pieces of spam, does that mean that each spam I recieve, has stolen $5 from me?
According to Bill 1618.s Passed by the 108th US Congress this email cannot be considered spam if....
A few points are raised:
1) How easy is it to include fake removal information?
2) Replying usually results in *more* spam as that address is recognised as active.
3) (and my most pressing point) WHY does this apply to any citizen outside of the United States, such as .au like myself? On first encountering this message, I randomly emailed several congressmen and women and got canned replies saying "Thanks.. priority will be given to local constituents." Nothing has happened since. I also checked with the Australian Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman who said that "We do not have any working relationships with International Ombudsmen" I abused several ISP's, most of whom are havens for Spammers *koff*earthlink*koff*
Do I, as a NON American citizen, have any legal redress that will actually be listened to? Or should I just continue to abuse shit out of those who want to spam me?
My other
As a note, I'm a member of several mailing lists that add "if you wish to be removed from this list ..."
The spammers get their phrasing from exactly this kind of stuff.
Not to mention that there are some emails that I want (Amazon's offers are usually accurate, so I like to hear about books that I may want to buy.)
In the eformentioned email lists, people sometimes get hot-headed, it's no common, but also not rare, to see someone try to refute someone else using all caps & exclamation marks.
I think that I agree with others, saying that sending spam should carry a heavy financial fine.
(Let's say 100$ plus termination of service for someone whose ISP got numerous complaints about.)
abuse@isp.com are good, but not enough, I'm afraid.
I'm getting about 10 spam messages a day, (and I use filters) if this go on I'll build a email-abuse button in my mailer. And hope that this would do some good.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
I already set up a forward list with... bill.gates@microsoft.com on it.
According to what I've heard, the address you want is billg@microsoft.com.
All these jackoff corporations going after websites for IP infringement, when in reality they're probably losing more money from spam.
Synchronized cocks!
I disagree...
I received the same exact spam message from the same address, over 20 times one day... That's 20 times I had to delete the damn thing...
Guess what happened the next day? It appeared again another 12 times... Last week, I saw it again 7 times... I have since blocked that email address, but who is to say that the same person doesn't get another email address and start over next week?
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
OK, then how about when EMAIL marketing REALLY takes off and %30 of all national and %30 of local businesses start sending out spam. Oh, and they think you need to be reminded once a month of their woderful products and services. The net result is that you will have 1000 times more spam than real email.
How's that for "getting real?" I live in the bay area - the number of companies that have national scope that could spam me and all the local companies that could spam me would number in the millions. If only 500,000 sent spam once a month,
that would be over 16,000 emails a day. If they only sent it once a year, that's still over 1300 a day. You want that?????? Is spam still free and doesn't cost you much now? Can you effectivly just hit delete anymore?
Let's go further and say that you have to use a modem due to the fact that DSL / cablemodems / etc are not available to you. Let's say that you are lucky and get about a 4K per second download rate.
Just downloading SPAM would take 1.1 HOURS a day! Is spam still "just a little anoying" anymore?
Unless we as a society really start getting aggressive about spam, this will be a reality. Penalties NEED to include jail time. That's the ONLY thing that will stop spam.
I'm trying to figure out what sort of loopholes companies like Doubleclick can make use of to qualify a potential spam recipient as having "opted in" for the "service." IANAL, so I'm going to show a certain amount of ignorance; can such companies make "opting in" a requirement of visitors to a site featuring their banner ads? Or would they have to wait for someone to actually click on the banner before they could say "See, he's interested, let's send him tons of UCE!"
Any attorneys out there who might care to tackle this question? At least as it might relate to current or proposed US or Canadian law?
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Opt-in really is no better than opt-out -- any idiot who has a grudge against you can submit your name to 1000 sites for registration and all of a sudden your mailbox is unusable. Not only that, then your address gets sold and you get spammed to death.
I tried to convince my last job that people on our mailing list had to "double-opt-in" to be on our mailing list, but the boss said it was "too complicated for users". I have since left that job, bleh.
I can't imagine spam costing $10 billion a year. Porn is probably much more expensive by far.
But you'll be facing a serious collection problem.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
First of all, I don't know that there is a commercial free speech to receive business solicitations in my home. It's a little different in outdoor ads, but when it comes to my home, I can hardly believe there is a "free speech" right for businesses to enter my home and put ads everywhere. And yes, receiving spam is the equivalent. This happens already with snail mail, but that doesn't mean it is so because it is constitutionally guaranteed.
Even if there were a business right to spam, there is the issue of consumer's right to privacy, which I believe is also consitutionally guaranteed. Does that matter? Apparently it doesn't, but it should.
Really, the issue is about what is more important: consumer rights or business rights. I argue that consumer's right to not be bombarded with ads at home outweighs the rights of business to spam me. If you are about to say that it is important for businesses to thrive, which in the end benefits consumers anyway, then great, because it leads to my next point...
Spam is completely anti-business. It is in the nature of spam that any idiot can bulk email millions for almost no cost. If it is not regulated, it will spiral beyond control, because even more idiots will use it. For many people this is the case already. Without government control, it will get worse, and email runs the risk of becoming useless due to extremely low signal/noise ratio.
Unfortunately, none of this really matters, because the people that really cause a problem with spam are the aforementioned idiots that don't care what laws are passed. Without secure mail and authentication, I'm afraid spam is here to stay.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Not really. The reason that spam costs us (Internet users and ISPs) is the cost of storage and transmission. By the time it hits your computer, the cost has already been imposed. Second, what you are implying by such a proposal is that spam is OK as long as it has ADV: stuck in the subject line. At the moment, spamming is against the AUPs of most ISPs and backbone providers, and many will boot spammers when they are discovered. If your proposal were to become law, spammers may argue in court that such a law would set up a framework by which they can legally spam without their provider being able to cut them off, no matter what the AUP says. Finally, I doubt that such a tag would cut into a spammer's profits too much simply because so few folks respond to spam right now. The reason most spammers do what they do is because a) they've been conned by the spamware vendors into thinking that this is a way to make money on the Net, b) their costs are so low, since the most they usually lose is a $19.95 Internet account, if that, and c) they only have to get a couple of suckers to respond out of the millions of spams they send out in order to turn a profit, albeit a small one. Believe it or not, most spammers aren't getting rich doing this, but the common wisdom is that they've convinced themselves that they're on the road to riches. And don't underestimate the stupidity of people when it comes to making money on the Internet. If you were going to open a business in a brick and mortar store, what general steps would you follow? The usual method is to first come up with a product or service that you see a market for, then build the business around that product or service. I can't count the number of calls I've taken from people who wanted a Web site because they wanted to make money on the Internet, then the next thing they asked me was what products they should be selling once they built the site. Now, these were fairly intelligent people, and they had their priorities totally backwards. Most spammers strike me as borderline to complete idiots with dreams of riches in their heads, so they're willing to eke out whatever profit they can, figuring the big payoff is just around the corner. No, I don't think this proposal is what we need. What we need, IMHO, is a law similar to the junk fax law. Outlaw the garbage, then make high-profile examples of some spammers. If you do that, many of the rest will run scared and find some other scheme that poses less risk. Actually, we really don't need a law to begin doing this; I think that if ISPs made sure they had financial penalty clauses in their AUPs, then aggressively used them against spammers, it'd make a lot of difference. Perhaps ISPs could share the legal costs of court actions by contributing to a common fund that could be drawn upon by participating providers. This would allow smaller ISPs to band together and have the financial resources to go after spammers they might otherwise choose not to sue. They wouldn't have to sue them all; they could sue just enough to turn the anxiety factor way up for anyone considering spam as a way to make money.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
This solves nothing; the majority of the cost is already paid by the time the end user's mail software sees the spam.
Why should we have the entire network paying to transmit millions of copies of messages if the entire point of this is to let everyone delete them? Why bother?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
It's about $4.00 Canadian a tin...I actually don't mind the stuff (in the tin, that is)
Seriously, how long until Harmel (or whatever their name is) decides to go after various net companies, suing that the word Spam is a trademark?
Wouldn't it be ironic if the biggest cost of Spam (tm) turned out to be the litigation costs?
So your point is that people did not attempt to exploit the internet for profit until it was profitable to do so? The rating on the duh meter is off the scale.
What are you, some kind of moron? If I start up "Dipshit Cable Network" or some sort of nonsense like that, of course I'm not going to spend advertising money there until the network demonstrates that it has the critical mass of viewers to make the advertising a useful investment. An Internet with 10,000 users does not meet that criteria. An Internet with 10,000,000 users does.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Political candidates have a right to publicly state their case, but they don't have a right to enter your home and start putting campaign posters on your wall...
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Not at all. Dreamhost requires every new customer to fax a photocopy of the credit card. Is it a pain? Yes. Is it a bad idea? Not at all!
Another idea is that ISPs could refuse to take credit cards that are less than 2 months old.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
No problem. As long as the majority of countries have anti-spam regulation, the rest of the world will blackhole the spam-originating countries untill they acquire a clue and stamp out spam.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Don't know about eudora, but in netscape, it's easy enough to set a filter such that if you address does not appear in the to: or cc: field, the message is trashed. Obviously, you'd want to apply this filter after any filters that recognized mailing list messages, etc., and might might still catch items which were bcc'd to you.
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I'm generally against the government getting involved in the internet. But this is one of the least damanging solutions I've seen and one I've thought of also.
Actually for several months there Hotmail was really good at filtering out bulk e-mail, though spammers disconvered how they were filtering it (if the hotmail address was not in the to: headers it went to the bulk folder).
- Subsolar
Not at all. Dreamhost requires every new customer to fax a photocopy of the credit card. Is it a pain? Yes. Is it a bad idea? Not at all!
Which proves that it is legitimate, physically stolen, or the person has a copy of Gimp or Photoshop.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If a business cannot scale beyond the county that they're in, say because they're a construction company and can't reasonably take a contract to build a skyscraper thousands of miles away.. then why would they spam?
My post said that most local businesses and a lot of national business aren't of the nature where adveritising on the national scale doesn't make sense. When was the last time you saw a superbowl ad for a plumber? Or a local auction house? Or a company that makes the little rubber feet that go onto electronic items so they don't scratch your furniture? Or for the maker of an IC?
Not everyone has a potential market that big, hence to think that a large portion of business will ever start doing it is crazy.
I don't like spam as much as the next guy, but to think that you'll ever get thousands a day? Get real.
-bugg
On what grounds? I've seen lots of people say this, but never seen anybody explain how when somebody pays $x for a product or service, which is the full extent of the transaction they are aware of at the time, that magically translates into "$x + permission to spam me". When I buy a product, I also buy the brand name of the product. This is why people purchase branded computers from Dell, Gateway, etc.-- not because the computers themselves are better, but because the company provides useful and worthwhile services. If I were to buy a PDA and send in my email address as part of the warranty confirmation, then I would expect to recieve useful and pertinent information. I would not want my email address sold or abused, and I would not want any sorts of advertisements. What does that leave, you ask? Plenty. User's guides, software/hardware updates, usability recommendations (i.e. product recalls), etc. There's lots of things I wouldn't mind receiving at all from a company I bought something from. As long as it's reasonable and helpful, I'd like to see it. If there was something on the warranty card that said "When you sign this, you are authorizing us to send product updates, etc. etc., to your email address," I would be quite willing to sign it. My very humorous sig has been
1. All ISPs need to really check the validity of a credit card before authorizing the new customer. If it takes two days to do this, so what? No one needs to get an email account right away at 2am. I suggest a new law that requires credit card companies to provide some method that can absolutely determine whether a credit card is valid, and that ISPs are required to use this service.
2. All ISPs need to charge a user's credit card some hefty fine if the account is used to send spam. Just terminating the account is not enough. I fine must be levied.
3. ISPs must be held legally liable for obvious security holes, such as open SMTP relays. If I own a couple of pit bulls and I accidentally leave my front gate open and the dogs attack someone, I'm responsible, regardless of how that gate got open. If I can prove that someone else maliciously opened the gate, then he's the one in trouble, not me. But that burden of proof lies on me. The same standard should be applied to ISPs.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Case in point: Check out this spam I received the other day:
m l
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jrross/email/spam.ht
I had to save it, I've never seen any spam so blatant in my entire life.
Most Spam is sent to multiple addresses at the same isp. Could ISPs detect when their mail servers are receiving several identical messages, then flag them for human inspection? Customers could 'opt in' to this as a spam filtering service, or they don't have to if they prefer higher privacy. Could this be a good use for Carnivore technology?
Or, instead of having a human inspect them, which would be time consuming, expensive and raise a whole bunch of other issues...Automatically attach a [ADV] prefix to the suffix, if many people at the same isp received the same message.
Of course, this would all require more significant mail server resources, and incoming email would have to be delayed, in order to prevent duplicates. But just because it's in your inbox doesn't mean you are immediately reading it. If a message is determined to be a duplicate, all copies of it would be flagged [ADV]. If you downloaded your mail before it got flagged, then some might slip through the cracks.
The extra resources would probably be too expensive in this day and age, but maybe in ten years this could be easily implemented, no?
Seriously, I think that Outlook and Netscape (and perhaps newer versions of Eudora) include funcitonality to filter messages not specifically sent to the recipient. If this is a problem, one should be able to just contact thier ISP and ask them to setup a .procmailrc filter. At the ISP I work at, we have set up a simple web-based filter to allow the customer to do this.
You have a right to talk, print up things, post a webpage, etc, and I have a right to voluntarily choose to go listen. That is the extent of free speech protection guaranteed by the first amendment as I see it. The government cannot interfere with your ability to make protected free speech or my ability to listen to you make it in whatever form you are making it.
However, I have a similar right to NOT listen. You cannot take away that right any more than the government can. Therefore, it is perfectly OK for you to set up a web page about your product or your political campaign but not for you send me email.
In a similar vein, it is only ok for political and other solicitors to come to my house because I have explicitly agreed to let them by not posting no tresspassing/no soliciting signs. I could, and could tell them to get off my land whenever they appeared, and that would be the opt-out answer to that problem. Some people do that. But they have no inherent right to make you listen to them by wandering onto your property. They can stand somewhere and you can go talk to them, or you can agree to let them come talk to you either explicitly or implicitly, but that's about it.
What seems to have been missed in the comments so far is so obvious it's pathetic. There is nothing wrong with advertising. As annoying as it can be, we all know better than to think if it goes away the 'net will be the same as before but without the ads. Spam is different.
When you get junk mail via snail mail, sure, you have to sort through it and throw out the ads. But that's not where the money is lost with spam. Junk snail mailers pay the post office to send their spam. The infrastructure of the mail system is not threatened because people are paying to advertise. Banner ads can clutter a site, but the owner of the site is getting paid. It's a symbiotic relationship.
Spammers Dont Pay Their Share For the Internet Infrastructure Used. Spammers usually sign up for a dialup account meant for residential use, spam all night, and get their accounts shut off the next day. Often they signed up with a fake credit card number, but by the time the ISP tries to verify it the next morning it's too late. The meatspace equivalent of spam would be a bulk snail mailer forging stamps and putting their bulk mail in the box without paying the postage.
Sure getting advertisements from JC Penney once a week is annoying. But JC Penney pays for their own mail servers and will let you unsubscribe. The real problem is Joe Schmoe entrepreneur who sees a quick buck by setting up some sort of scam and getting "free postage" to send out their advertisements with no legitimate contact info and no way to be removed from their list.
Think, people!
I'm sure it varies tremendously depending on the targetting of the spam, but one published example is LifeMinders.com, who say their opt-in mail lists get click-throughs from one in ten recipients. Seems way high, but part of their schtick is that ask what you're interested in when you sign up...their whole business model is sending "helpful reminder messages," and it really is legitimately an opt-in system. But even if it's totally untargetted, undesired mail, so what if only one in a thousand click on a link? The cost of e-mail is very low, and the returns can be high. With porn sites, for example, referral fees are typically $20-40 per person who joins with a credit card, so if one in 50,000 recipients sign up, and you send ten million messages (not uncommon), that means 200 signups, or $4000-$8000 for one hard day of spamming. You have some real costs at that level, and certainly lots of hassles with complaints and account closures, but people obviously find it worth the trouble, or such spam wouldn't be so common.
SPAM is a billion dollar industry?? In 10 years from now, when MS have a "monopoly" over SPAM, will the Department of Justice step in?
The Internet would be doing just fine today without "spam", if it only had 10,000 users.
The Internet has a hell of a lot more than 10,000 users.
Sustaining viability these days takes a hell of a lot more than a couple of liberal arts universities with extra cash to throw around. It takes real commercial backers. Sorry if this offends you.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Just because you have the right to say something, you do not have the right to make me use my resources (or resources that I have paid for) to listen to you. Have you ever had junk mail come "Postage due"?
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Hardly. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is a content restriction. Method restrictions are different.
Suppose I go buy a massive PA system and set it up outside your house. Then I and some pals start shouting about our great new MLM scheme. Around the clock. For days.
If you call the cops, they will come by and ask me to stop. If I don't, they'll arrest me pronto. This would even apply if I was making political speeches or reading poetry. Why doesn't the constitution protect me? Because the cops are rightly suppressing a public nuisance. The content is entirely irrelevant; it's all about the method.
So as the original poster wrote, "Free speech means that you can say whatever you want, not that you can say it however you want." If you think it should be otherwise, let me know where you live so I can drop by and tatoo my messages on your forehead.
My post said that most local businesses and a lot of national business aren't of the nature where adveritising on the national scale doesn't make sense. When was the last time you saw a superbowl ad for a plumber?
True, but irrelevant. Spam is cheap, and cost shifting makes it even cheaper. I get two or three spams a day for businesses in Argentina; I've never even been to Argentina. Why? Because it's more expensive to carefully target your email than it is to just send out a few million extra and live with the decreased response rate.
I don't like spam as much as the next guy, but to think that you'll ever get thousands a day? Get real.
Ten years ago, I got zero. Five years ago, I got one or two. Today, I get maybe 30 a day, despite extensive technological and social measures to reduce spam. Since you seem to have the answers, care to tell me what the maximum number I'll get is? Don't forget to include the fact that only a small percentage of potential internet users are currently on the net.
You're right that it won't be thousands a day, because I'll abandon email entirely at that point. But Moore's law makes spamming ever cheaper and Metcalfe's law makes it ever more useful. Pretending that spamming won't get worse is just sticking your head in the sand.
Sneakemail is a really cool service. It lets you create disposable emailadresses.
Whenever you need to give out your email-address (and it needs to be a real working address), you just create a new one at Sneakemail.
You should only use each sneakemail address for one service/site/whatever. Why, you ask?
Well, if you later gets spam on that address (which you only have given to the site "http://wesellsyouraddresstospammers.com" then you will know that either they have sent spam to you, or some spammer in some way have bought your address from that company. After telling that company how much you disgust them, you can just delete the address and they have a fake address.
Together with Spamcop you are ready to fight the spammers!
Greetings Joergen
Trying to control any mentions of anything remotely related to your trademark is not reasonable. You have the right to prevent others from using it to represent their products. That is all. Slashdot does not sell meat products, and therefore Hormel has no justification in complaining.
Only governments can levy fines, not commercial entities. "fine" == "Pay us or we put you in jail."
The TCPA (47 USC 227) and its implementing FCC regulations ( mainly 47 CFR 64.1200) prohibits the transmission of any material advertising the commercial availability or quality of any product, service or property to any person without that person's prior express permission or request.
Under the TCPA, recipients of unsolicited fax advertisements, if otherwise permitted by the laws in their state, can file suit in state court to collect the greater of $500 or actual damages for each fax, and/or obtain an injunction. If a court determines that the violations were willful or knowing, the damages can be tripled at the discretion of the court
(Waited quite a bit to post this, huh?)
Anyway, yes, they do have reason to complain - they sell SPAM, and own the trademark on SPAM. As you point out, they cannot enforce this trademark onto other areas. They can still graciously request that people don't muck around with it. Since the canned SPAM meat has really nothing to do with UCE, there's no reason to use a SPAM can as the logo.
Say somehow your name became slang for something that most people consider undesirable (ignoring the fact that this also applys to SPAM the lunchmeat) - would you like everyone using it? Well, Hormel is accepting it. However, if everytime something that has nothing to do with you is mentioned, people use your face or your product to describe it, wouldn't you be upset? In fact, there probably is some legal recourse if it can be proven that via association the term is degrading someone else's image (ignoring, again, that we're talking about SPAM).
Bottom line, the SPAM can really has nothing to do with the topic and there really is no reason to use the can for this topic. Since Hormel is being cool about the slang term (don't forget, there are other non-lawsuit based options out there, like launching a compaign to change the term to something else), it seems like it would be nice to repay them by not associating their product with junk e-mail.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
What's the big deal, this is nothing compared to the money spent on other thing. Assuming everybody gets as much spam as me (and the probably don't, I have the unfortunate habbit of hanging on to even my oldest email addies..) the cputime+bandwidth spent on spam divided by the cpu+time+bandwidth spent on other things is miniscule. using the same reasoning 'traceroute' defaulting to 3 udp packets per hop is causing massive losses. (alias traceroute='traceroute -q 1' btw :-) )
>Postal mail advertisers actually pay for the >delivery and other expenses incurred by third >parties.
Yes, but on a whole... does it matter *who* pays for it?
You guys have come up with a lot of different ideas here to try to combat spammers, but unfortunately not one of them that I have read will work in the real world. To effectively regulate spam, the current smtp emailing system will have to be scrapped and a new one put in it's place. This is because, even if you could regulate U.S. spam on the current system, you would not be able to stop international spam and spammers will just set up email servers outside U.S. borders. Right now the smtp system of emailing can be compared to the early days of the telephone when we used party lines. Anyone could pick up a phone and call anywhere and be charged the same as the person who calls no one. Spammers cannot fight the temptation to get a $9.95 dial-up account and blast out millions of emails. The only way to stop them is to put in a new system, such as they did with the telephone system. Now when you pick up the phone to make a call, you are charged. Why don't long distance companies get mad when their customers use their service to make unsolicited sales calls? It's because they are paying for it. Therein lies the key. Set up a new email system that can charge for bulk email. Divide the email system up into two categories - one for personal and one for commercial. Make the system so that only one personal email can be launched from a computer at a time. Put two separate inboxes in the new email software, one for personal and one for bulk email. Then bulk emailers could purchase blocks of email from their ISP. Those who don't want to read spam would just never open their bulk inbox. This would also cause the international market to buy into our new technology if they wanted to send email of any kind to the U.S. Problem solved. Now wasn't that easy? Just takes a little thought instead of a lot of frustration. Now go to it techies. Create this system and sell it to Bill Gates.
You modded yourself up. Be a man and admit it.
If you knew anything about how this site works, you'd know that it's impossible to moderate in a thread once you've posted in it.
That means you can't moderate yourself up.
==Shoeboy
As someone who has some experience running a website, and hopefully some entrepreneurial experience in the future, I view UCE in a somewhat different light. People's opinions on advertising in general and UCE in particular has bothered me for some time.
Everyone knows that banner-ads don't work. Targetting of banner-ads is incredibly weak, and unreliable. No one really seems to click them anymore, and quite a few people are starting to filter them out completely.
Text based ads on sites are even less effective than banner ads.
Don't even get me started on popup ads.
Obviously, the advertising I've listed above doesn't work. However, UCE does. You get undiverted customer attention. You send it and forget it, instead of waiting for people to come to you.
How do you expect an internet economy to support itself without some form of advertising to get you to places you haven't been before? Capitalism simply does not work without advertising. If you don't educate people about your products, you won't sell any.
As consumers, we need to pick an acceptable form of advertising, and then we need to support the business that use it. I realize it would be nice if there was a business-free, just-for-fun internet. However, in reality something has to pay the bills for all these big fat pipes.
UCE is the perfect solution to me as a consumer. I'll compare it with banners ads to tell you why.
Banner ads is something you have to download every time you go to an internet site. It slows down my download times. Often the ads are annoying and animated, distracting me from my web browsing. It takes up valuable screen real estate. If I'm looking for valuable information, why do I want something distracting taking up a percentage of my field of view? And finally, banner ads are graphical files. That takes lots of disk space, and bandwidth.
Most email is much smaller than even the smallest banner ad. It's something you only have to look at once, then delete. Once you delete email, it never bothers you again. It doesn't get in the way of real information.
As both a consumer and an aspiring business person, UCE seems like the optimal opportunity.
Ben.
Ben Schumin :-)
One ironic part of the internet is that every user thinks that they should have ultimite protection of free speech... these same activists want to ban a form of speech that they happen to not like - spam
Spam is not a form of speech, it's a method of speech. Free speech means that you can say whatever you want, not that you can say it however you want.
Please! No spamming the birds. The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
and I'll risk my karma and sign this un-anonymously.
I very strongly disagree with cje's post, but it is not something I would say is intended just to rile people up.
One point he made, All right, let's say we all chip in $10/month to read Slashdot. Still want to get rid of those ads? I didn't think so is actually quite on the mark.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
If you really think spam is OK, consider these figures:
There are about 5.7 million businesses in the US. Now assume that only 1% of those decide to send out spam, and that they send out only one spam per year. That's still 156 messages in your mailbox daily, on average. Some days you might get more.
Given how cheap it is to send out spam, it's very likely that more than 1% of businesses would partake, and also unlikely they would limit themselves to 1 message a year.
Spam is only merely an inconvience as long as the companies that partake are kept underground. If spam is legimized, you can be sure it will be a severe problem.
I already set up a forward list with my district representative, senator, and bill.gates@microsoft.com on it. Any time I get spam, I just send it along. I am pretty sure I'm on their ban-list by now, but it still helps me to blow off steam...
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
In order:
- Spam email goes through an outgoing mail server. Spammer has most likely paid for server time, so it's not that big.
- Repeat process for several servers, depending on where the message is going. Spammer is no longer paying for server time or transmission costs...but somebody somewhere is.
- End user receives message through incoming mail server. End user is paying for service, and getting that spam email costs him money. You pay for the service that receives your mail, you pay for the time you spend online checking your mail, and you pay for the time you spend reading/deleting/blocking/forwarding to abuse@[spammer's ISP].
Since in the end you the email recipient are paying to see the message, it's almost as if a credit-card company started sending you "pre-approved" card offers every day...postage due. Add to that the servers in between, which cost money to operate, and the number of servers and networks that get clogged by the occasional spammer who emails a couple million people at a time, and the cost mounts up very very quickly.Using the SPAM can as the topic icon goes against Hormel Foods', the makers of SPAM, requests that their product not be used in conjunction with unsolicited commerical email. (Full statement on their webpage along with the story of why UCE is called "spam.")
Anyway, I'd like to suggest a new icon for this topic, since the current icon really should be changed. My suggestion is to create an image of three Vikings with the words "spam spam spam" over their heads. It would invoke the original "spam" meaning, which is what the spam topic is truly about, without violating Hormel Foods' quite reasonable request that their product image not be used in conjunction with UCE.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Woah. When you registered, was there an agreement that you didn't bother to click? Even if not, them emailing you (provided it's rare and is related to the product) is reasonable and legitimate. Selling your address would be not.
Ah, but now YOU are spamming.
Send in the attack dogs!
So this will confirm that this email is valid for the 100s of other SPAMs letter they have in stock...
Speaking for my former employer, that link will indeed remove you from some lists. Customer support staff are expensive, and businesses relying on email are terrified of getting on MAPS, not to mention all the ISPs' private banlists. Significant numbers of complaints are viewed as serious problems.
Of course, some of those motivations may not apply to the fly-by-night isp-changing small operator.
The test to use is probably whether whoever's sending you the mail is trying to hang on to a single network location; this exposes them to MAPS.
- Feb 2: A "legal" TV descrambler, which appears to just be assembly plans, for "educational" purposes only. Apparantly they claim it'll let you want the pay-per-view and other pay channels, for $12 or something like that. (too bad I don't watch TV) Also some stuff about jamming police radar. Yeah, this questionably legal aspect is going to be a theme...
- Feb 1: Making over half million dollars every 4 to 5 months from your home for
an investment of only $25 U.S. Dollars expense one time THANK'S TO THE COMPUTER AGE AND THE INTERNET ! What kind of an idiot sends $25 to something this absurd?
- Jan 31: If you are in debt or need extra cash, we can help you get the money you
have been hoping for. Our services are FREE and we have already helped thousands of homeowners, just like you. Now that's pretty deceptive, since any refinance costs a 1% loan origination fee, and these sharks usually charge much more.
- Jan 31:: Save up to 70% on your Life Insurance! I don't know enough about life insurance to say for sure this is a scam, but is sounds too good to be true, so it probably is.
- Jan 31:: A "we've redesigned our site" (yet again), from Onvia. Admittedly, I did buy a printer there about 8 months ago, and I always make sure that any "send me emails" boxes aren't checked. At least they are a reputable vendor and they shipped my printer the same day.
- Jan 31: THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE!!! PIANO OWNERS- we offer a patented device that sits on your piano keyboard and allows you to play the piano immediately!! They gave a toll free number to call.
- Jan 30: Start your mail order business by learning from an expert
... FREE Downloadable book for you to keep!!! ... My wife and I have been in the mail order business since December 1999. We have made over $100.000 since! The email urges you to visit their website, which I haven't done. They've been in the business for 15 months, and they're the "experts" I should learn from ??
- Jan 30: Super Sex Pill with no side effects!
... Finally, there is A Dream Come True Product ... This formula helps you with naturally triggered arousal and erections, not artificially triggered like Viagra. There's a link to a website, which presumably has more info.
- Jan 29: Mortgage Rates DROP!! Lenders COMPETE for your Business!. Just like all the other refinance crap.
- Jan 29: IMPORTANT! ANTI-AGING BREAKTHROUGH:
:)
- Jan 28: ATTENTION BUSINESS OWNER/OPERATOR
... From time to time, most companies experience a cash flow problem. ... [name removed] is a national consulting company specializing in reducing problem debts for companies of all sizes. Yeah, that's why their email has a forged header... just the sort of folks I'd want to be dealing with.
- Jan 28: The "legal" tv descrambler again.
- Jan 28: Aggressive 125% of Value Home Loans Available Now
... We have loan programs that are unheard of It goes on about how they can get you a loan pretty much no matter how bad you are with credit. Kinda shy on details, though.
- Jan 26: Meet The Richest People On Earth
... the message about 99% html tags and 1% text, and I've reading it in VIM, so I'm going to skip trying to figure out what this one was. On the bright side, it looks like Jan 27 was one of those rare days without a single SPAM received
- Jan 25: You were referred to me as someone who was ready for a Financial Breakthrough! Bullshit, this is a damn spam, who do they think they're fooling, starting out with such an obvious lie? I am looking for a few motivated and teachable individuals who are ready to start earning at least $2000 per week starting right away. And a SEVEN FIGURE income within the next 2 years. I wonder how many people really bit on these get rich quick schemes.
- Jan 25: Do you have a Timeshare or Vacation Membership? Are you interested in renting it? We can help!
- Jan 25: Do you need help with your credit cards
... Reduce your credit card debt by up to 50% ... Decrease your payments by 30% On the bright side, Jan 24 was spam free.
- Jan 23: Let us Eliminate Your Debt.
- Stop creditors from hassling you.
- Cut your monthly payments in half.
- Make you debt free in less than 5 years.
- You can not be turned down for this program.
- Jan 22: Obtain Biotech IPOs!. This is another mega-html message, with a meta tag from MS frontpage at the top.
- Jan 22: New Findout About Anyone Fast Now!
... Download this today and discover the EASY WAY to find out anything about anyone
- Jan 22: Spainsh text and
.EXE attachment, dictionary.com translates it as something about Snow White's 18th birthday. Maybe this isn't spam and a trojan or virus, but I saved it to my spam file anyways.
- Jan 22: VENTURE CAPITAL BUSINESS, CAREER AND INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY
... Our program entails interacting with CEO's of
emerging growth companies and assessing and qualifying their financial needs. If accepted as a partner, there is an $9,750 investment required. Message gives USA phone number, but email header filled with forged and conflicting non-us email addresses.
- Jan 21: (this scam is one of my favorites) This exciting opportunity requires a very LOW START-UP COST and has already been TESTED AND PROVEN. We are in the information age, billions are made every year in the information industry and you can take part in making money by selling information. The basic idea is that you'll get rich quick by buying a cdrom, making copies, and selling to others on the net (via spam), who for some mysterious reason didn't already fall for this scam.
Well, you can form your own opinions. Actually, reflecting back on this list, it looks like I'm on the "bad credit" and "get rich quick" lists, but somehow I'm not getting much porn ads like I used to.- Reduce body fat and build lean muscle WITHOUT EXERCISE!
- Remove wrinkles and cellulite
- Increase energy and cardiac output
- Lower blood pressure and improve cholesterol profile
- Improve sleep, vision and memory
- Restore hair color and growth
- Strenghen the immune system
- Enhance sexual performance
To TURN BACK YOUR BODY'S BIOLOGIC CLOCK. Wow, now if only they make is stop this damn spam, they'd really have somethingLooking though these messages, that have a few things in common, which might allow a very effective filter to be written. Near all offer (a likely bogus) way "to be removed". This phrase almost occurs at the end of the message, often times with "remove" or "in error", and either an email address or url immediately following. The other style, which isn't usually present in normal emails, it a large number of 2-5 word PRHASES IN ALL CAPS, followed with lots of exclaimation points!!!!!
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Sorry, boycotting this is just a very bad idea. I, for one, have received very good deals via "spam" channels on numerous occasions. It just doesn't make good bussiness sense to pass on such a deal once you have received it, even if you got it as "spam".
Ah, right. The 'fire in crowded theatre' approach. As long as we can restrict methods of free speech, perhaps we should only allow free speech from prison cells. Say whatever you want (not that anyone will hear you.)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The law says that a fax-spammer can't send more than one per year to each recipient, and there's practically no way to enforce the law. For example, to whom do you report a fax-spammer?
I get junk faxes all the time, and at first I searched and called and threatened. The faxers know that the cost of collecting is way too high. They're careful to send only a few faxes per year (per shell company, of course). They try to appear to take the complainers seriously, and they'll take you off their lists if you give them enough info to do so (unlike email spammers).
What we want for email spam is a national opt-out list, and huge penalties for spamming people who are on that list. I don't want to let them spam me even once per year, or they'll set up multiple shell companies sharing lists but not domains, and spam the hell out of us anyway.
--
If you don't like spam, I recommend sneakemail. I haven't given out my real address to sites or businesses in months. I've seen a reduction in my spam intake (except for some place that continues to think I'm a debt ridden home owner looking to start a business on the internet). YMMV, but I like this better than the filter war I was in--gives me the trump card.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
2) Mandatory Opt-in lists will only work if you have filters in place that only allow "verified" addresses to get into your inbox.
The way my former employer does it, if someone is seen to have opted in for mailings, he or she is sent a single confirmation message and must click a link in that message to receive anything more. MAPS calls this "closed-loop subscription."
If successfully enforced, such a system could reduce the noise a bit.
It may be wrong, but thats the cost of freedom, people do bad shit occassionally. For instance if you ban spam, then you also have to ban unsolicited snail mail, telephone solicitation, door-to-door sales(vaccuum cleaner guy, the boy scouts & camp fire & the local church, etc). The people that want spam banned are the same people who bitch about the government banning things online that are perfectly legal in the real world. BAH I say.
something has to be done. I've spent my day trying to fight spam overtaking a couple of mailboxs.
Maybe confiscate the computer equipment that sends forged email headers.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You got it backwards, kiddo. Spam is abuse of the internet, with the potential to render one of its most important services, email, unusable. Spammers are parasites who use up resources and pay nothing for it, and they frequently employ illegal means. You are either an idiot or a troll.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
I just skimmed all the posts and I wanted to point something out using a mix of the comments.
1) You'll never "stop" spam, or be able to force and ADV: tag. Don't even ponder it, it's not worth the effort.
2) Mandatory Opt-in lists will only work if you have filters in place that only allow "verified" addresses to get into your inbox. That means tons more server space holding all sorts of lists and certificates of verified sources, and anyone not on that list (a customer, a old pal from grade school, Publisher's Clearing House, etc) will never be able to contact you. Blah to that notion.
3) When spam hits your inbox, it IS too late (as several people already said). The effort and CPU cycles are already used. For me to click delete a few times or spend an extra 4 seconds a day on the modem is negligable in a real-world sense. Sure it's annoying, but so is traffic on the highways. That's life, oh well.
4) Lastly, the only REAL way to ever -STOP- spam, or even slow down, is for the bigtime IT guys to say enough is enough and tweak their servers. We have known for a LONG time that a LARGE percentage of spam comes from a certain popular web provider's servers. It's high time that some of the decent IT departments out there got together and started cutting off incoming traffic from servers that have a proven track record of "we don't give a damn about security or IP verification." I imagine that it would only take a few weeks of embargos to convince the other companies to shape up their act. Sure, we can't get them all, but if the bulk of spam is coming from a KNOWN common location, why not plug up that gap?
Yes, I know we'll have to keep plugging gaps, but everyone knows that the best way to approach security is not to be 100% secure, but to be secure enough that the enemy gives up or leaves to find an easier target.
------
Let me give you the lowdown
Let me get this straight.
First, I hate spam, and spammers, and make every effort not do do business with spammers. HOWEVER...
10 billion euros a year? How so?
I get alot of spam (say 20 messages a day) but I'd have trouble suggesting they cost me *anything* at all. They cost me a few moments to delete. Oh yes, they aggrivate me, and perhaps an American lawyer can tell me how to put an economic value on some slight aggrivation.. but really.. give it a rest.
Even if its mandatory, it doesn't mean spammers will use it. Just look at the current rules about privacy and sharing data with 3rd parties. I have email accounts I never use, but they still get flooded with spam. I set the filter on one account to trash absolutely everything. Spammers go for the quick and easy and don't give a damn about you or I. They're willing to send out unsolicted bulk email, after all. And thats assuming their web site stays up more than a few days. Of course there are plenty of countries that will allow spam out, as well.
We need to be able to make it profitable to track down, bill, and collect money from spammers to cover costs. Right now it is entirely way too cost free for them to stop. They will stop when there is no longer any advantadge to this.
The solution I've proposed in the paste is to licence them, make enforcement of the license a federal/central goverment matter.
the licensing is so that they are "tagged" AND can be easily identified. Sort of like a Tax ID number, etc. ISPs and users can use this number to bill them since the data is a public record. make the cost higher than common mail.
Point being that if there is a profit in tracking down spammers, and it is very costly to send spam, then it will stop.
We got to hurt them in the pocket book
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
is when sites like eBay change your spam settings without your approval.
Real bothersome that it required me to take additional time outside of my day to click the stupid links to disable eBay's advertising crap, in order to make sure "thats what I really intended" I'd love to see legislation make it fully illegal to spam without explicit opt in (and no cheeky stuff either, like hidden form tags or by saying "Clicking any link in our site opts you in for our spam" - but an explicit mark the box kinda opt in)
Oh well, thats my $.02
Information is the catalyst for revolution
Try using the Spam Calculator on Brightmail's website. It uses several different variables in calulating the cost to all Internet users, and it assumes an annual cost of $255 million. You also have the option of entering your own values for the variables and calculating the annual cost based on those values.
this would make spaming useless and it would cut off after a while because no one would even be bothered with reading the subject line.
oh and if you say being forced to add a prefix to teh subject line of an email is a violation of free speach im going to cut your balls off with rusty garden clippers. and yes i am a member of the ACLU
--aiee
Here is the site
Linuxisforcommunists.org
Sorry, but I don't EVER get flyers in the mail advertising: Porn, get-rich-quick schemes, new and improved mailing lists to get more flyers to more people, University degrees, legal cable TV scramblers, etc.
Spam is only for illegitimate business such as the above. Also, flyer carriers are supposed to obey "NO Flyers" signs on our mailbox, so your real-world analogy has some serious holes in it.
Personally, I'd love to rid the world of flyers too, but until then...
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
True, many are fly-by-nights. But many porn sites have been around for several years, and a handful have gross annual revenues exceeding $100 million. These larger companies forbid direct referrals in non-opt-in e-mail, but some allow "laundered" referrals...that is, the e-mail directs you to a website at joeschmoe.com, and joeschmoe.com refers to you to the porn site.
They want to. But there's no control over the junk coming in unless you use things like RBL and ORBS. Yet you have another vocal group of whiners that try to destroy all that and further promote spamming while giving lip service to idealistic TCP/IP.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
In the US, that'll stop spam dead in its tracks. Allow the user to sue and the ISP to sue. If the ISP shows complacency then sue/fine them too. LOL.
And that is how you turn 10 billion dollars' worth of network abuse into zilch in 2 months flat.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
It may be wrong, but thats the cost of freedom, people do bad shit occassionally. For instance if you ban spam, then you also have to ban unsolicited snail mail, telephone solicitation, door-to-door sales(vaccuum cleaner guy, the boy scouts & camp fire & the local church, etc).
Of the things you mentioned, I would sincerely like to see all of them but the non-profits banned. ESPECIALLY telephone solicitation!
In many places, it IS illegal to solicit door to door if there is a sign indicating that it's unwelcome. It IS illegal in the real world to solicit someone over the telephone once they have told you not to call again.
The problem is, nearly 100% of SPAM is a theft or abuse of service. Typically, the routine goes:
Some add the additional insult of: Move email addresses of complainers to the verified list and sell for 99.95 (In violation of their simple request to be left alone). Then there's the ones who use a valid email address (not theirs) as a reply address.
Added to all of that, about half the spam I get is for scams that ARE, in fact, illegal to send over smail mail.
All of the steps spammers take is based on their certain knowledge that they will annoy a great many people and their desire to avoid hearing from the people that didn't want to hear from them (nice hypocracy).
You've got it close here, but it's actually MUCH easier than that.
"bulk" boxes don't work because you are still paying to get the spam, and it saps your connection. You have to think from a corporate viewpoint. I don't want the spam on my network AT ALL. I also don't want my ISP's lines clogged with spam either as it degrades my ability to surf / use the net.
ISP's need to filter outgoing SMTP to all servers except their own mail servers. Their servers need rate limiting code in them to disable any account that smells like it is trying to send spam. Nobody regularly sends out emails to their 1000 closest buddies. If someone has a true need, the ISP can put a "special" flag on the account to open up SMTP / disable rate limiters - but require the user to sign a contract forbidding spam, and charge them a Very large penalty if they do. The ISP should also require that the users system does not relay spam from unauthorized sites (easy to do with modern servers.) This allows "power users" to run their own mail systems.
ISP's can also look for massive SMTP Syn packets
from direct line / business customers and make sure that the customer is not spamming. This isn't that hard to do either - just dump a few boxes on your backbone with gig-e cards, and monitor. Look for spam patterns (type of connections - not content monitoring - only check content when it looks like a spam run.)
Most spammers use throwaway accounts. They sign up for "free trials" and such. They use debit cards that have $50 on them to sign up for service, so the ISP can't bill them. Even though spam costs ISP's millions, they are unwilling to stop it. It will take congress to fix it. We also need to put pressure on people to close open relays (see maps.abuse.net)
The only way for email to survive is to eliminate spam. If we don't stop it, it will continue to ramp to thousands of messages a day.
FOUR HUNDRED MILLION??? WHo the hell eats that much spam!??! Although I must admit, fried spam and eggs, maybe with a touch of last nights ramen, is the breakfast of kings!! I'm always a little embarrassed at the check out lane when I have 4 or 5 cans of spam....
I'm a sys admin for a small company with two sides, one non and one for profit and with about 50 total employees in the US. I make US$50k per year, or about $25 an hour. Each day, I spend about two hours or possibly more weeding through the spam that gets sent to us from a variety of email addresses and I put filters on our mail server to then block those email addresses and in some cases the server. Then I might also send out warning emails to the admin of those servers and even an email to the fine folks at the RBL if the spammer is a repeat offender. If I'm lucky (like yesterday), I track the spammer down to the source, call the ISP, have a nice chat with their admin and find out this is the 3rd time this month the bitch has been tracked down, and presto change-o that spammer is now looking for a new ISP and T1 provider.
So, for the sake of easy math, about two hours out of my day, 5 or 6 days a week but we'll call it 5 since I'm on salary. So with 52 weeks a year, it costs my employer about US$13000 anually for MY time alone which the spammers have in effect stolen from my employer.
That doesn't count the time of the other people in office and out who get spam and have to delete it, the time I'm sure which is wasted by the foolish ones who actually read the f*cking things (lets face it... what salesman WOULDN'T read the one about how to enlarge their weiner in 30 days?).
There are, of course, some days when there is much less spam, some when there might be more since we have to list our email addresses at a variety of locations and it is unavoidable that our "info@" address will be used.
So if you think about the number of poor slobs in my situation, in the Boston area where I am, there are probably thousands. And if even half of them spend time trying to take a bite out of spam, that would add up to millions of dollars pissed through just to keep some moron from sending out this crap. And if you think about the amount of time we have to spend looking up security patches for sendmail, Exchange, etc., to keep some of the more technical of spammers from using our servers to send their junk, it would add up to even more. And for what? I can not imagine that spammers actually make enough from this to have it be worth their while! But they have to, because why else would these jackasses keep doing it?
*sigh* ah well... it gives me something to do on days I don't have users to LART.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I don't like electronic spam one bit.
However, I bet realworld spam cost us a hundred times of what electronic spam cost us.
Think about it:
* Trees have to be cut down to make the paper
* Plastics is used
* A lot of polution is produced when the spam is delivered.
And so on...
All theese processes consume a lot of energy, which we get from more or less unclean sources.
You can also count on the wear on our roads and such...
The list can go on forever but I think I've made my point.
I see alot of posts saying to the effect "a little bit of spam doesn't cost or hurt" but it does really hurt.
When a kid can register for an hotmail address and a couple days later be receiving emails for porno that he didn't even ask for. That's just WRONG.
It's also wrong to have to "forge" email headers to deliver spam, because putting your real email address there would get you into trouble. Having to lie to do something is just plain WRONG.
The spam I get in my email box are not from anybody who wants to do me a favor (like get paid for having sex, we have free money to give you), but rather from people who want to rip me off. That's just plain WRONG.
Scraping my email off a website/newsgroup and because I like to participate in a specific discussion - and using it to try and rip me off is just plain WRONG.
There are no "good" spammers. Just people who think sending 50K emails an hour is "good". They're just plain WRONG
For the same reasons we have a post office that handles junkmail/direct marketing in a specific way with specific laws, so to we need laws to handle the "spam disease".
The lame "we can't pass any laws because the internet is "international" is bullshit. The telephone is international too, that doesn't mean you can harass me with it. Besides, all the companies above are US based. Let's start with taking out the bastard trash in our corner of the world, and worry about the rest later.
There is so much time-sucking, bandwidth-sucking, hassle-sucking spam out there, that for the same reasons people pass laws against mail and telephone fraud, so to people need to get sick of spam mail and pass laws against Unsolicited Bulk Email.
Here's a little something to help those of us who are fed up cope a little.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
There's only one way I can see to stop spam... don't click and don't read. If we as spammees choose not to participate then the game will end. Idiots that click through and especially those that buy perpetuate the problem. Boycotting businesses that spam will decrease the time time will take to get the message across.
G
1) Urge all ISP's to add a clause that in their policy that sending mail with forged headers will cause termination of service and a fine of $25 per mail sent.
2) Invest 10% of the income from these fines in rewards for catching elusive spammers and providing evidence against them.
3) Tighten the laws in various countries so that sending mail with forged headers counts as fraud, mail fraud, or something similar, and is punishable by a hefty fine or even jail time. If possible criminalize the sending of forged mail from anywhere to within the jurisdiction, as well as from the jurisdction to anywhere in the world.
This still leaves those spammers who actually use their own name in the neaders, but they are a minority, and knowing who they are, we can organize boycotts, mail campaigns, and other forms of civil disobedience to make them see the errors of their ways.
In Murphy We Turst
I think you worked at those "e-mail marketing companies" (what a nice euphemism) for a bit too long.
The right to free speech doesn't include the right to invade someones privacy or disrupt other people's means of communications.
Just you wait when a political figure starts calling people on the phone at 3AM with an autodialler.
OTOH, I'm more in favor or requiring specific labelling for advertisements, opt-in or not. It makes it easier to filter for end-users, but it also makes it easier for ISP's to bill eachtother at their network boundaries. Ultimately, the cost will then end up with the spammer or with the ISP that doesn't want to tell who was spamming from behind such-and-such IP number. When spammers are reliable footed the bill for their actions, their gone forever within a few days.
Erwin
they've fixed it for you! Now no one will be able to see your email address when you sell something via eBay. Presto! No more spam. That's what they are advertising, anyway. There is the convenient side-effect of preventing contact between the seller and potential buyers outside of eBay. (wink)
Guess that might not do much for spam from eBay, itself, though. I bet no one enjoys that "special manipulated feeling" one gets from being tacitly opted-in for spam.
http://www.abracashop.com/recipes/SPAM.htm
From the article:
"In Khrushchev Remembers, Nikita Khrushchev credited SPAM for keeping the Soviet Army alive during World War II. "We had lost our most fertile, food-bearing lands, the Ukraine and the Northern Caucasians. Without SPAM, we wouldn't have been able to feed our army."
Cost of spam? Priceless!
You can't handle the truth.
I've worked for several email marketing companies. Some were very good, requiring opt-in on everything. Others weren't as good, although anyone from any of these companies would tell you, "we don't spam." This is a problem in the industry, and it must be addressed for the spam to stop.
I've seen the future, I've worked there. I don't see spam going away, no matter how much it costs or annoys us, nor do I see addresses not being sold and used for "direct mail".
I hear lots of talk about requiring "opt in", but can the US really do that? I don't opt in when a political canidate comes to my door to sell me on his campaign - and I shouldn't, for that's what free speech means. Where in the constitution does the federal government get that power (and don't say "regulating interstate commerce!"). Why would a government that allows sale of postal addresses (a physical safety threat!) but not allow sale of "virtual" addresses?
One ironic part of the internet is that every user thinks that they should have ultimite protection of free speech, and that the Internet should never be censored. We should be able to view our porn without risk of being jailed. Yet, at the same time, while porn is considered protected by internet activists (although, it could be argued, forms of pornography harm society) - these same activists want to ban a form of speech that they happen to not like - spam.
Oh, that's right, spam costs the sender money. You see, in the US, where we pay $19.95 for unlimited internet access, we consider a modem downloading a few thousands ones to be "expensive". Face it: it's not. True, some spammers have abused other's resources, but there will be many who don't. (Spammers may even pay a fee to the ISP affected by the spam, the same way junk mailers pay the post office - but I bet people will still hate the spam just as much) You still pay for postal junk mail, too. You might even pay more for postal mail than for spam! My time is fairly valuable, as I have a limited amount of it in my lifetime. I venture to say it takes slightly more time to throw away a junk postal mail than to delete a spam email (especially if the postal mail is a credit card application, and I'd rather someone else didn't use that information). Yet, my time is considered less valuble than a fraction of a cent that it costs a spam to sit on some server.
Oh, and for the record: I hate spam. But, I realize that I live in a free society and sometimes people do things that I really don't like. True freedom is only possible when someone can anger another without fear of the law or their safety.
is how many Euros get pumped into the economy from people who buy spam products.
I dunno, I never liked the taste of the stuff anyway.
BilldaCat
That was really informative. Thanks.
It's cool to see a company take such a low-key "we're OK, you're OK" approach.
This discussion has been going on for ages. We all know that spam costs money. Realistically, however, I think there is very little that can be done about it, given the amount of freedom we all have. Everything that would impede spammers would also infringe upon the liberties of the general net-using citizen.
So what to do? Report the spammers to the originating ISP and hope they'll have to find a new home.
Note: I agree with the person who suggested the new icon for spam articles. Three vikings singing "spam" would be appropriate.
Anti-spam measures can either be based in legislation or in technology. From the amount of spam I get on a regular basis, I can only assume that all technological countermeasures to spam have failed miserably or else I wouldn't be getting so much. It is just too easy for spammers to foil even the most sophisticated of them, even when they are put in place by people who obviously have double the IQs of the spammers.
Now politicians are generally clueless when it comes to technology, and they will inevitably enact legislative barriers to spam that will have unwanted side effects for the rest of us who have been following the rules all this time. (Witness the clueless European reaction to "cybercrime" that will make it illegal, say, for a sysadmin to run a portscanner on his own server unless he hires an expensive trained monkey with a government-issued license to do it.) But it isn't as if technological countermeasures to spam can't also have the type of unwanted side effect that people rightly fear will result from arrogant legislative action.
Here's an example: Remember when the Internet was full of open mail relays? I had several mail accounts on several different servers, and I could send an email from any of them no matter where I was connecting from. Not anymore. Thanks to spammers, the days of open relays are gone. And this is a real pity, since relays are the kind of technology that are especially suited to the Internet, but that can't be used in a world full of people who like to take advantage and ruin things for everybody. Now, I can still POP my email from anywhere and read it, but if I actually need to send an email from a certain account (such as I have to do all the time with, say, an UNSUBSCRIBE request to a LISTSERV) I actually have to make a long distance phone call to the ISP just to be able to talk SMTP to its outging mail server! You all know the story. Unless your configuration is different from most people's, or you have some clout with your local sysadmin, you can't send emails from your work account unless you're at work (or dialed-in to work), and you can't send emails from your home account unless you're dialed in at home. This is something that seems to affect everybody EXCEPT spammers- they always find an open relay somewhere. And we've gotten so used to this that we think this is normal!
That isn't the only side effect of technological countermeasures. If your ISP is determined to be a spamhaus, it can get the "Internet death penalty" and you are SOL. There is also a growing trend for ISPs (especially the big unresponsive ones, who view even the possibility of spam as a threat to their bottom line) to take it upon themselves to apply the death penalty- they simply block all incoming mail from certain domains and "solve" the problem before it has a chance to start. Things are already progressing to the point where the reliability of email sent from point A to B will no longer be something you can take for granted.
This sort of reminds me of the way we lost the payphone to the drug dealer. Remember when payphones took incoming calls? It was great! They don't anymore, because a technological countermeasure was taken to prevent drug dealers from being able to pick up ringing payphones. There had already been legislative countermeasures in place to the drug trade, but the technological countermeasure was the first to affect all payphone users in general. My grandmother was stuck at a bus station for six hours once. I forget the details of the story, except that it involved a payphone not ringing.
(This probably isn't relevant, but in the time I wrote this, I received three spam emails.)
Needless to say, we aren't friends.
Despammed is the best solution I've found. It's filter is better than Brightmail's.
"I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I do deny them my essence"
How about ISPs simply put a clause in the service contract, something like "If you send UCE, advertise the site we host for you with UCE, or receive emails solicited via UCE on your mail account, you will owe us $10000 (adjust the currency symbol and amount as needed) per incident. We WON'T cancel your account, but we WILL disable it. If you fail to pay, we WILL destroy your credit rating, we WILL garnish your pay, we WILL charge you 5% interest per month, and we WILL make your physical address and name public on our 'Spammers Hall of Shame' page."
www.eFax.com are spammers
That's actually the Wimpy (from Popeye) appoach!
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
6. 4 are false sales undertaken in revenge of the spam and 1 is a guy from aol writing "ar this girls nakid with out my wif's nolege?" and 1 is from some schmuck in hong kong selling gold lame tiger shorts who wants to buy the spam software used.
The money that you pay to your ISP is so that you can use the majority of their bandwidth for your personal purposes. There will be a portion of the remaining bandwidth that is used for advertising. That is a consequence of living in a free society.
Let me ask you this: are you aware of a cable or satellite TV provider that does not feed their customers advertisements, even though they pay a monthly service fee? Of course you aren't; such an entity does not exist. You pay for the bandwidth, and that includes the bandwidth that is used for advertising. That is how things work. Why aren't you boycotting CBS for showing Budweiser ads during the Super Bowl? (After all, you have to pay your cable company to view CBS, right?)
Advertising doesn't hurt anybody. Some people might find it inconvenient. But the key lies in making those people realize that without advertisments, the networks that they watch every day would not exist in the first place.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
The truth of the matter is that "spam" mails (which is a hateful, derogatory term if there ever was one) are the commercials of the Internet.
Funny, I thought commercials funded something useful (televison, radio, etc.), what is it again that spammers fund? A more accurate analogy would be that banner ads are the commercials of the internet.
Like network television
Network television? Network television is free.
advertising has become the life-blood that allows the Internet to survive.
Yes yes, the internet was a horrid wasteland before spam, thank the lord that spam came along to save the internet.
I hope spam does not become the advertising choose of the internet. Televison ads do not cost the consumer a thing execpt the cost of your TV and cable service. Also with televison ads the do not take away resources from the consumer.
Yes I do believe the banner ads are a nessary evil of the internet but not spamming. You can choose what websites you can go you can not choose who sends you junk e-mail. The difference between junk mail and junk e-mail is that junk mail does not cost you a thing to recieve it. Now junk e-mail it cost you your computer and a monthly fee inorder for you to get junk e-mail. Also junk e-mail also take up your ISP's and your personal computer's resources. Your argument is flawed my friend. Have a good day