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Get Spam From Your Friends
ncc74656 writes: "CNET has this story about Revo Networks and its Admail system. Unlike most spam, which gets sent to you as a separate (and filterable) message, Admail would modify all of your incoming mail by attaching spam to it. Want to read your email? You're stuck getting the ads as well. It's being pitched to ISPs and webmail providers, as it can be applied to both webmail and POP3 accounts. And you thought you had enough spam clogging your mailbox already ..." Of course, most if not all of the free webmail services do add a line of spam to the top or bottom of all messages sent ...
This is assuming of course that you didn't give them prior permission to insert their junk, as you most likely would have done. Yahoo's free webmail for example inserts a line at the top and bottom of the mail, but this is perfectly legal because it is authorized in the agreement in which you get the free email account of the first place. I don't see anything wrong with this really - if you really don't want the ads, pay for a service without them.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm not so sure about that. Depending on how it's formatted, it could be argued that the original mail is being presented unaltered, and an ad is being displayed *in addition to* the email. I don't see how making it text is different than displaying an ad banner in the window or something.
Note that ISPs already *do* alter messages as they travel, adding on Received: headers and the like.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I tried this approach. I registered a domain name. I figured out how host that domain name on my dynamic IP address (assigned via PPPoE). I downloaded, installed and learnt about Debian.
:(. They claim it's to combat SPAM originating from their network. It seems that this is a popular tactic of many large ISPs. What BS. Like many other people, I'm looking for an alternative ISP.
Within a month my ISP had started deploying a port 25 filter
Thanks to the US government.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
This has to be one of the more disgusting ideas I've heard of yet in the put-more-unsolicited-ads-in-our-face campaign. I honestly feel it's tolerable to have little blurbs at the bottom of an email like Yahoo or Hotmail. (Yahoo actually provides a number of free, useful services after all) But actually having full color ads attached to email? This sounds like a sure-fire loser to me. I can just imagine forwarding a message to my boss and it happens to have that X-10 "semi-naked" woman and a little "hidden" camera in the picture embedded in the email. No way.
I bet this will further clog email servers all across the country, the ad content will likely take up more bandwidth than the actual messages themselves.
Congratulations, Revo Networks. Another genuinely stupid idea on how to get try to force more SPAM into our daily life. Have fun going out of buisness, I'd sooner pay a few $$ for ad-free services than resort to having big ads IN my email.
(If I could find contact info for revo networks, I would send them a hate-mail already.)
Brett
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
Assuming that you're on some sort of broadband connection, see if you can get a static IP address. You might need to switch from residential to commercial service, but you can generally do what you want with a static IP.
I set up a mail server on a dynamic IP through Cox about a year and a half ago. It worked fine on that until they rolled out DOCSIS service for residential users. At that time, they blocked inbound port 25 to dynamic IPs; I learned of it when I stopped receiving email one day. :-P Previously, both residential and commercial users were issued COM21 modems...now COM21 modems are only issued to commercial users, though residential users who already had them were grandfathered in. In any case, there's no difference in cost at the lowest service levels between residential and commercial accounts, but static IPs ($10 each) are only available for commercial accounts. If the difference in cost isn't outrageous in your area, it's an option to consider.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Phone up your ISP and ask to have the port un-blocked. Many ISPs have default blocks that they will remove if you ask them nicely.
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come to think of it.. attaching ads is changing the content, and could possibly be a copyright violation.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
As far as I can see from the article, the primary intent of this is for providers of free e-mail services - they get to make money by advertising to their users.
I am sure that the general reaction here will be one of horror and anger, let us remember that the users of these systems choose to use them and that you get what you pay for. If you are too cheap/broke to pay for a real e-mail account, you have to suffer the consequences of your choice.
However, I think this sort of thing will tank just as all previous advertiser supported systems have. People who want to receive e-mail will get a real account, and the people who are too cheap to do so are a really lousy marketing demographic.
I give it three years. Tops.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The last paragraph of the article:
Would somebody please explain this to the inventors of popup ads?
To run your own mail server if at all possible. This sort of vile nonsense is likely to keep getting worse, but it won't matter a bit if you receive your email through a server you control.
--
I work for a mid-sized ISP and we don't give out addresses to anyone but new accounts still get spammed. Why? Because someone sees our domain names and begins sending mail to common letter combinations and common names, guess what? They hit real addresses all the time.
When I was using hotmail back in the day I often got spams that had my first name and tons of last names appended to it my email address being my first_lastname I would get the spam. I don't know if hotmail is selling addresses or not but I do know that alot of spam comes from an educated guess.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
If I send you email, I didn't give anybody permission to dick with my intellectual property. It doesn't matter what agreement you signed.
I already filter email from various mailing lists and other quasi-spam opt-in operations like the Wall Street Journal Interactive. I run it from a procmail rule for example
:0 Hbf
* ^TOtopica.com
| ${DETAG}
I tried to post the code, but the lameness filter dinged it. Figgers. The first genuinely useful thing I've done in years, and Slashdot deems it "lame."
Of course, most if not all of the free webmail services do add a line of spam to the top or bottom of all messages sent
My favorite example of this is hotmail, who continues to add a notice about "Click here for MS Internet Explorer" to their email. Is there anybody on the planet who will receive that mail and say, "Internet Explorer...never heard of it. Better click there, sounds interesting."
Hey dumbass marketing people, get a clue.
We don't want to look at advertising. We're trying to conduct our business and our lives here.
Seriously, all this is going to do is force me to use up more hard drive space for archiving my old mail messages. I'm still not going to actually read these ads. I've already mastered the art of skimming, honed through years of websurfing on sites where the signal to noise ratio is pathetically low.
I guess I can only look forward to the day where instead of receiving your email, you get a ransom note, saying that if you don't buy products from Company X right now, you'll never see your messages again.
Hey, I know! How about developing a system which shows you an advertisement which covers up the real content of the email message, and in order to unlock it, you have to score above a certain threshold on a reading comprehension exam. I can see it now...
[ ] 3 days, but act now!
[ ] 7 days, but act now!
[ ] Offer subject to change or withdrawal with or without notice, so act now!
[ ] Not $100!
[ ] No, not even $50!
[ ] The low, low price of $19.95!
Etc. Anyone else feel like puking?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I'd call it really fucking stupid, and I work for an ISP! Only free mail providers like Yahoo would use this .. and they already do, so in that way it isn't news. If my emails suddenly got ads attached, I'd switch ISPs the very same hour.
sulli
RTFJ.
There is almost no faster way to get me to switch ISP's. If I am paying for the service, then the customer is always right and has a vote. I always vote with my pocketbook. Why do you think copy protection, dongles and such had a bad time. Lots of people voted it down. Are you old enough to remember when software came with a hardware dongle? Remember how fast it was returned? Get a clue.
The truth shall set you free!
and discard unencrypted parts if an encrypted part is present.
Liberty in your lifetime
Let's see here...Interent end-users don't want to see advertising in their mailboxes, on the webpages, or anywhere else.
Advertising agencies don't understand that we don't want to see their ads.
Somebody cooks up yet another way to get advertising from people who "don't get it" to people who don't want to see adverts. Then they make a company to sell it.
I can't wait for this company to tank. The only thing that I can't understand is why a technical person (presumably a person who uses the Internet) would actually want to work for a company where their job is to devise new ways to pump spam to people who don't want it. Just goes to show you that the world is full of whores.
So SPAM is not only free speech (according to the ever-patronizing Dick Gephardt), but now they can just put words in your mouth, say by writing the "ad" as a P.S. or a very clever sentence.
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By the way, I totally love Vermont Teddybears. If you love me, send me one! 1-800-555-SPAM
Increasing numbers of people now browse through localhost "junkbuster" web proxys in order to increase their signal to noise ratio.
For email, its been easy enough to trash the distict spam messages with simple filters, like: "subject contains "FREE", or two or more exclaimations, or contains 10+ consecutive spaces, or is longer than 80 chars," which takes care of 90% of my spam.
But, if ISP's actually started inserting inline ads -- and people couldn't vote down that (monopolistic) ISP with their dollars -- we'd need yet another proxy between the mail-client and junkmail-server to filter out the junk midstream.
I can't imagine this will fly with paid-for ISP's though...imagine the Post Office opening up your snailmail and placing post-it notes on your letter from grandma, or, stamping hotmail-esque ads on the envelope itself. Just not gunna happen (but it does, you can bet there's a huge demand for countermeasures.)
Power to the Peaceful