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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with SPAM wastes so much of our lives these days, and given that the famed 'time = money' equation has not yet been repealed, I'm at a loss to understand why I can't find more commercial solutions to this problem.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?
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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A former coworker of mine is involved with a new company that is doing just this. Essentially, it's a mail filtering/forwarding system.
Not surprisingly, they're at www.monstermail.com.
Question: Isn't it MY email address? Like my phone number?
While we all probably get junk mail in our 'snail' mailboxes, it takes no time on our part to sort through it. I usually know what is junk in about two minutes or less and just chuck it in the recucle bin. With spam it can take longer to sort through because it takes MY time to download the mail. I have gotton sometimes over 30 spam emails a day. While my email filters filter out much of it into a special folder, some places are now getting my real email address and spaming that. This ends up in my inbox. Do you know how long it takes to download some of this email? Especially if there is a slow connection. Or if they decide that they are going to send HTML with graphics. Yes I can turn off the html, but aside from setting up 'do not download email that is larger that xxx bytes' how do you stop images?
What I'd like to see is some company come up with server side email filters, like I have in my email app. Where I as a user can set up email filters that say any mail that does not meet this criteria just reject. So I do not have to ever download the email. It would cut my span down by about 50 to 70 percent. Just my solution. The isp can reject the email or just send it to /dev/null for all I care..
Only 'flamers' flame!
Basically, anything like that comes down to one of two basical approaches; either you have someone read all your mail, or you try to automate things. The first is impractical, expensive, and I think a lot of ppl would have trouble with giving up that sort of privacy. As far as the latter goes, there are a lot of different things you can try, but basically they all have the chance of false positives, and spam sneaking through. I can't see anyone paying money for a solution that will 1) still result in spam, while simultaneously 2) deleting real mail. Now, maybe the best you could do would be to get the best filters available and some sort of guarantee that every rejected mail is personally reviewed to make sure it's really spam, but I don't see that being cost effective. Personally, I get on average of 10 spams a day, and it's nowhere near worthwhile for me to do anything other than delete them manually (well, I have suspicious mail filtered to a mailbox I check less, but that's another matter).
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
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
Try using procmail in conjunction with one (or more) these DNSBL services. Be warned that some of the DNSBL services are more 'aggressive' than others.
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http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/24/1657205.shtm l
I cannot see that it would be worth more than about an hour of my time. I can set up a good filtering system at home (my Linux box does email server duties) in that time. Many people could do it in much less time, but I like to tinker.
This has the advantage that _I_ control it totally. I don't have to switch email addresses, something I'm not willing to do. And as I filter at the server level, I can continue to use any email client I want (and I use three on a regular basis).
So let us pretend that I make $50 000 a year. One hour of my time is therefore worth about $25. So I'd pay about $25 for a filter that eliminates spam _permanently_ and meets the above criteria.
Of course, I haven't done either. I guard my email address and only get a few pieces of spam each day. I can just delete those messages without reading them, most of the time. This probably means that I'm not willing to pay that much, though I still think the urge may hit me one day to play with procmail or something.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
I have been pleased with the spam filtering from Bigfoot, and it says that it is now available to all members again (they tried for a while making it a $19.95 Premium Service).
Just try out http://www.spambouncer.org/ and you will have little to no spam problems. I've used it for 2 months now and it's succesfully filtered 700+ pieces of spam, only once flagging some mail from a friend (who used all BCC receipients), and only twice letting spam through.
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.
How about a spamtrap? Set up an email address, or addresses, and do whatever it takes to make sure they get on absolutely every spam based mailing list in existance. Then compare every message that goes to those addresses with messages that appear in your inbox. If any of them match, its spam.
that would probably catch 99% of them... if implemented correctly. Probably have to account for randomizing of headers and personalizing the messages, but otherwise it should get pretty close.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Brightmail has such a commercial service. They have "sensors" out on the net at large, which are used to identify spam in realtime. Once they've id'd a spam message, they roll it out to filtering relays at the customers site, they do this as often as every 5 minutes. It's extremely effective from what I hear. It's also extremely expensive-I checked into it for my company and it was something like $20k/year IIRC. Way too rich for my blood. Probably works well for folks like Apple and IBM, who can afford to drop that kind of cash.
What would be interesting is if an opensource/community project took on the same approach; seems like it could be done, the basic idea is fairly simple really.
ehintz
Check them out at http://www.postini.com/.
My ISP (the one that I use, I certainly don't own it) is beta testing Postini's service. Basicly all mail is sent to Postini, they filter it based on content huristics and send the "good" stuff on. There is a web based area (which can be tailored to give more or less options to the user) where preferences can be set, and "tagged" email can be checked.
While I was participating in the beta, I was really "promiscuous" with my email address. Now that the test is over, I'm sorry. Pricing is really quite resonable. I've been told that the cost per user per year (for an ISP of about 150k) is around $10.
You have a good point. The only sure way to filter out ALL SPAM is to have someone else read it. Of course there are preventive measures that can be taken to make sure that you never get SPAM to begin with -- or at least minimal SPAM.
1. Sign up for a free email account that you don't plan on using for your main email address. It's much easier to let go of an email account (if you have to) when you aren't shelling out money for it. You should have two... A main email address and a dummy email address.
2. Use the dummy email address to sign up for any sites where the email address might be stored or displayed on a page. That's usually where spammers will get your email address by using harvesting software.
3. The main address can be given out to family and friends, but NEVER post it on a message board. That's pretty much asking for it. This way, only legitimate email will come to your inbox.
4. Check the dummy act about once a week for legitimate email that may have found its way there by mistake, and if need be, send a reply email with the main email address. Delete the SPAM.
5. Accept the fact that sometimes SPAM is sent out to random email addresses, and you may still get one or two a week.
6. DO NOT EVER reply to SPAM, and don't ever follow instructions to be removed from the "mailing list." This just lets the spammer know that someone is actually reading the email, and you will get even more.
7. DON'T BUY ANYTHING. If people never bought anything from someone who sent them spam, do you honestly think that they would continue to go through the trouble of sending it?
Maybe not a complete solution, but I can almost guarantee that it will make a fairly large dent in the ammount of spam you get.
I'd pay $100 a month not to have spam free e-mail, but to have a spammer beheaded in public each month right here in my hometown.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Suppose Congress passed a law extending "open season" on spammers to 24-7, 365 days a year, and allowed for the payment of a bounty for every spammer hide turned in.
I'd chip in a few bucks a month, probably along with every other user in the country. That'd be several million bucks a month. I dunno, what's a spammer worth? $50 for the bullets and maintenance of the weapons, plus disposal costs?
Only problem is where we'd dispose of all the spammer carcasses. The EPA would be all over our ass. Spammers smell bad enough when they're alive.
But if we're just talking about some sort of filtering to get rid of the spam in the mailboxes, not a red cent. Spam is a problem that can only be stopped at the source -- stop the spammers, whether through legalized culling, jail time, or just plain beefing up ISP abuse desks (umm, and Broadwing and Genuity going bankrupt ;-) and the spam goes away.