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Spam-Free Email-How Much Would that Be Worth to You?
Elias Israel asks: "Being a believer in free-market solutions, wherever possible, I am puzzled by the relative lack of technical/business solutions to the problem of SPAM. Given that dealing with SPAM wastes so much of our lives these days, and given that the famed 'time = money' equation has not yet been repealed, I'm at a loss to understand why I can't find more commercial solutions to this problem. Having heard long ago that whenever the question is 'why' the answer is always about money, I'm asking for Slashdot readers' help: Can it really be that there's no money to be made in cleaning up spam? So, if you could virtually eliminate spam from your inbox, how much would you be willing to pay to make that happen? Given that filtering spam is an ongoing and evolving hassle, would you be willing to pay an annual or monthly fee, and if so how much? Maybe if we can figure this out, the economics of a solution will emerge." Given that now SPAM includes e-mail viruses from your favorite Washington-state based company, the rules of the game are now MUCH more different than they were. Still, would some of you out there be interested in paying to remove SPAM from your inbox?
Who is going to read your email for you to verify if email is spam or not? Either you do some sort of content filtering or you block restricted email addresses/domains or you only allow known addresses.
None of those things requires money.
This isn't difficult to figure out, folks. Just check out this tidbit from my exim.conf. Four lines block about 98% of incoming spam looking at the logs.
o rg:outputs.orbz.org:orbs.dorkslayers.com:relays.os irusoft.com:spews.relays.osirusoft.com:dialups.mai l-abuse.org
rbl_domains = relays.ordb.org:orbz.gst-group.co.uk:inputs.orbz.
rbl_reject_recipients = true
rbl_warn_header = false
recipients_reject_except = postmaster@ursine.dyndns.org
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Offers both FREE reporting, and advanced "you pay for it" filtering (which I think is based upon volume -- but still very cheap).
Works great for me. And it digs through the mail headers to see who really sent the emails.
http://spamcop.net
As you can see, I don't mask my e-mail address on these posts. I am a registered user of spamcop.net, and now I get maybe 1 spam a month.
When asked for an e-mail address on a survey, a website, or to fill in anywhere, I provide my spamcop address. Also, when giving e-mail addys out to friends/family, I provide the spamcop address.
When you send a message to my account, you automatically get a bounce reply. You can reply to this message, and your message will be sent as normal. From then on, you never have to worry about it. Alternatly, I can authorize you from their simple web admin system. Also, I can deny whole domains, specific users, anything, just by filling out a couple forms.
If I don't like what I see on there (I check it about once a week), I can simply report it as spam to their ISPs, delete it, or allow it, with a few simple clicks.
They also filter out all attachments (you can turn this off if you want). My family is a group of computer neophytes, they are constantly getting viruses. I'm notified that there was an attachment, but it never gets to my box. I can safely tell them they're infected, and I never see it again.
The price is extremely good. I paid $25 for 50MB of e-mail almost a year ago. I've still got some 40MB left (most mailings are no more than 10k, usually much less).
I know I sound like a commercial, but I feel it's important to point out the great business when I find 'em.