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TrustE Launches Trusted Spammer Program
Silverhammer writes: "InfoWorld is reporting that such luminaries as TRUSTe, ePrivacy Group, MSN, and DoubleClick are getting together to develop a "trusted senders" program to certify "commercial email" and "elevate" it above ISPs' and end users' spam filters. Why, you ask? Because they believe it's actually our fear of fraud that's hurting their response rates. Apparently all that stuff about invasion of privacy and theft of resources is just a big misunderstanding..." The Infoworld story linked above has the best information about this seal program, but CNet has another story including a quote forecasting 1400 pieces of spam per person per day in five years. Update: 01/31 17:02 GMT by M : The FTC is announcing a crackdown on spam.
Because they believe it's actually our fear of fraud that's hurting their response rates.
When I found out Sally and her dorm full of debutants weren't posing just for me, I felt hurt and angry!!
including a quote forecasting 1400 pieces of spam per person per day in five years.
That's only about 5 times what I get now. Serious.
I get junk mail at home, but most of it is Arby's coupons and Pizza specials. I like those.
I don't get "get rich quick" or "see my web cam" at home. I do get "you're approved for a loan" and "cheap health insurance"
I just trash it on my way from the mail box back to my apartment.
Annoying? Of course
Do I worry about it? Nope.
All we have to do is filter any e-mail with this "Trusted Sender" Seal and cut them out.
00110100 00110010
There's another story about Truste in today's Investor's Business Daily on page A13. Check it out. Unfortunately, though, it's not available via the web.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Question how can any spam be trusted? OK so the ISPs will allow these ips to get through? If so all the spammers have to do is forge some headers and we are now getting supposedly "legit spam"? I see something majorly wrong with this. I dont think we should make any exceptions for anyone. Spam is Spam.
Isn't that an oxymoron?
"Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously." - Hunter S. Thompson
can they actually be that deluded? Perhaps when they launch this program and it falls flatly on its face, they will realize that people hate spam because it's SPAM, not because they don't trust its validity.....
I noticed that TrustE seems kind of spam friendly. I mean they don't require sites to have any sort of standards, they just require that they have the policies in place, and that they use them. What the policies actually are, is up to the company.
TrustE is just a shill, a fraud like the BBB, a company that makes money by getting businesses to join, and defrauding the public into thinking they have any real oversight power at all.
American military specialists had begun to believe that the Afghan military has been avoiding contact out of fear that the bullets the americans were using would cause cancer. The americans have, since then, gotten together and dilivered many more bullets in order to prove to the Afghans that the bullets wouldn't cause any cancer. The afghans declined comment.
Take a look at what it means for a site to be "Truste compliant" and you'll quickly see how worthless Truste is. To summarise - they don't care what your policy is as long as you state it publically. Well golly, I feel better already.
How hard would it be to forward this entire posting to these people to give them an idea of what we think of spam in any form?
Granted it probably won't do much, but rather than just grip about it, maybe if they saw a large chunk of the internet loving community opposed to this, they would...ah hell, nevermind, they are spammers. They don't care. For a moment I thought they might see reason, then I woke up.
Sent from your iPad.
I've just had to, within the past month, give up my 'freemail' account that I'd used for mailing lists and signing up for web sites because it's now little more than a spam bucket, and I was always careful to never check those "receive offer" boxes. It's now just full of spam from Taiwan and China and the like along with the typical get-rich-quick, debt relief, Viagra, and sex site ads. A friend who runs a server network was kind enough to give me a real POP3 box instead of the simple forwarding most of his other users get.
I keep the address strictly confidential, just like my 'real' address that only gets a very small amount of spam per week. It's for a few mailing lists that I trust and are privately owned and run; I know who to yell at if I get spam on that address.
Whether or not a piece of spam is "trusted" by some other organization is not going to change my opinion of whether or not I want to buy anything. I don't. There are specific entities and individuals that I wish to receive mail from, and then there is the simple fact that I don't want to have ads thrown at me in email, too. Web ads (I block those and am not ashamed of it), TV ads (I watch a lot of PBS; great 'geek' programming and few ads) are enough, thank you.
They don't get the point. Or if they do get the point, they just don't care. I do not want spam. Period. All the sleazy spammers have ruined it completely for the good companies that try to do it responsibly (opt-in, genuine list removals, ADV: subject tagging, etc.) but you know what?
Tough.
i am a soviet space shuttle
The DoubleClick link isn't working. Oh wait, that's just my proxy...
See, I just didn't have enough things to do with the computer when I got online. I found myself feeling isolated, unrecognized, and downright bored. I'm just relieved to know that somebody knows more about me than they should, and that they can target not just the occasional pop-up web ad to me, but hundreds - nay, thousands of e-mails inviting me to partake of their oh-so-wonderful business opportunities.
Seriously, people, this could be a good idea potentially, if a few things were true:
1. It decreased the amount of "non-certified" spam, just because almost anything that decreases spam is a good thing.
2. You had an option to block the "certified" spam in addition. I wouldn't mind a few extra seconds of effort if I could take care of the whole group of approved spammers all at once.
3. If they agree to only "approve" non-porn spammers. I have the distinct disadvantage of being an AOL member, and my god, I tire quickly of the same "incest-with-beasts-vegetables-and-more" crap. It's not even funny anymore.
But, since I don't see any of those things happening, once more we find ourselves at the mercy of the big businesses who obviously know what's best for us.
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
TrustE should just make membership in this program opt-out instead of opt-in.
Well, normally I would be skeptical of this mortgage consolidation plan, but because DoubleClick says it's OK...
Does this make sense? I think that once everyone's mailboxes get saturated with x emails, they'll stop reading them. Lets say I'm a normal computer user and I get 3 pieces of spam a day. I might not understand the concept of spam, read those emails, and buy something. However, if I'm a normal computer user and I get 1400 emails a day, I'll probably ask my friends to start calling me on the phone again.
My point is, I don't think it is a monotonic increasing graph of spam versus time, because at some point the spam will be so overwhelming to their target that the person will just ignore all of them instead of looking at the few that they currently get.
Perhaps we should start password protecting our inboxes in that to send me an email you have to supply a password.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
> Because they believe it's actually our fear of fraud that's hurting their response rates.
...
I know this is flame bait, but in most first-degree murders and sexual abuse (or at least sexual abuse ) cases, the victim knew and trusted the perpetrator
"Old man yells at systemd"
[The Truste seal] will signal that the e-mail is from a company that has agreed to guidelines based on fair information practice principles, Schiavone said.
This is great! Now all I have to do is put a line in my Mail::Audit filter to look for that seal and automatically ditch any mail that contains it. Or better yet, send a reject notice to the "trusted" sender saying that I didn't ask for it, I don't want it, and if they don't want to be sued for wasting my bandwidth, they'd better not send it to me any more.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I hate spam. I also hate having to go and check each individual program's webpage to see if they've updated. I hate having to use online price guides to see if what I want is cheap. I hate giving my email addy out to people who provide this service because they often get sold.
For a few selected parties, this could be a good idea. And it may just stop those stupid "MS will give you $200 if you forward this mail" twats.
What I do now is give my email address in the form of somecompany.tld@mydomain.tld - I've caught a few people out on their privacy policy and once an addy gets too much mail *poof* it's gone.
So, yeah, if someone could gaurantee that my addy is safe when I sign up for something that would be just dandy - for now I'll just keep track of who gets my address.
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
It benefits everyone except for whoever didn't solicit the email. The only good thing is that the end user will be able to filter it a bit easier than normal spam, but it is still spam nonetheless, a digital signature doesn't change that.
Since they are being so "helpful" with the digital signature, why not also include a helpful link like "click here to sue this spammer for unsolicited email". Then they would offer you free legal counsel, and immediately settle out of court with you for some unmentioned amount. Sounds good to me.
Another thought, since this is now being done at the ISP level, if you are in a state that supports anti-spam laws, are you able to use your ISP too?
-- Dan
But, you do pay to recieve spam via email. That is where your argument fails
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This will make spam filtering *much* easier -- at least some of it.
Targetting is the problem.
.ca email address isn't likely to belong to a US resident, for example -- and I'm sure that these "privacy infringing" companies know about my university degree.
I get all sorts of email advertising bachelors degrees from "prestigious non-accredited universities" -- no use to me since I already have a *real* degree -- offers for credit cards and mortgages which are only available in the US -- I'm a Canadian -- and all sorts of other untargetted spam.
Anyone with minimal competance could do some basic filtering -- a
I don't really mind getting unsolicited commercial email. It's when I get email which is very obviously of no value to me that I get annoyed.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Hypothetically, I like the theory of a trusted opt-out list. What's the difference between theory and practice? In theory, nothing....
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
The enclusion of this so-called trusted sender seal, especially since it will likely be highly standardized, will make filtering of spam easier than ever before; and bouncing back "trusted sender" spam in bulk will be a cinch too :-)
I think a lot of companies don't want us copying their games and music cds because they don't TRUST us! I think we should all get together and find a way around. Oh wait, that's illegal... but how is THIS any different?
Someone to sue.
Yay!
Wouldn't it be a smart idea to start thinking about IM clients?
Sooner then later spammers will figure out that IMs get A LOT more attention then email.
The definition of spam is unsolicited bulk email. If I didn't request it, it's spam. I don't care about verifiable senders, guaranteed content, or genuine remove methods: I JUST DON'T WANT IT AT ALL.
We can all add the TrustE seal to procmailrc and a whole chunk of conveniently labelled spam would go away. Now if only I could get the postman to deliver all the junk mail into a different letter box too (a round one outside)
SHUT UP!!
Bloody Vikings...
/* Steve */
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"-TMBG
I really agree with many of the arguments about why this is dumb, but I could see one positive side to it. I would love it if there was a "remove me from your list" link in the spam I receive which I could trust. Right now, I never click on those links, because I'm afraid they're just going to see that my email account is active, and add me to 50 more lists. But if I knew that any remove link to "http://verisign.com/remove/..." was trustworthy, and it would remove me and do nothing else, I would like that quite a bit.
The worst thing about spam to me is how powerless I feel to do anything to control it.
"I am a cipher, a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce" -Jimmy James
I have this e-mail program that only allows incoming mail from users that I specify. If I don't allow mail from them then the server sends it off to /dev/null before it ever reaches my inbox. It works great for me. Perhaps more users/ISPs should do the same.
"Trusted Spammer" is an oxymoron.
The only spammer I would trust is a spammer that would never send me spam because I never intentionally informed said spammer than I wanted to receive email from him, in which case, it wouldn't be spam.
Damn... I think I just logically determined that spammers serve no useful purpose in this world.
What do you think?
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
This is perfect, now I have a 100 percent sure way of getting rid of crap that I don't want to receive. My new SPAM filter looks something like this:
/TRUSTE/ ){sub_delete( $email );}
if ( $email =~
Caution: Contents under pressure
TRUSTe's resolution program will have no legal authority. All it can do is say "Bad Spammer! No Seal of Approval for you!" Big frickin' deal.
Spammers exist because it's so damn cheap to spam. Bulk e-mailers have very little real financial risk, even in states that have enacted anti-spam legislation. And I'm sure TRUSTe will have no power to levy fines or otherwise penalize errant participants in their program. This is so much smoke and mirrors to fool an ignorant public into believing that "certified" spam is any more legitimate than the crap that already piles up in their mailboxes.
Soon we'll come to the point where we must submit a list of trusted addresses to our ISPs' sysadmins, and they'll have to configure their mail servers to block everything not on that list. Until we come up with an enforceable solution for shifting the financial burden of bulk e-mail to the spammers themselves, this plague will continue unabated.
It has fewer requirements than being BBB member.
It just makes me wish I had thought of it first, but at no point did they ever say thatwere not suppossed to send out reams of e-mail to the unwary.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
The problem with spam is that is mostly useless. If spammers refined their targeting strategies users would not complain.
A golfer would never consider a cool catalogue with the latest golf toys spam. A hacker would welcome the latest diff of O'Reilly titles.
Instead we get this useless pieces of mail asking to join in some Ponzi scheme, send a penny to Craig, copy DVD movies, and Viagra for St. Valentine day (I'm not making this up).
Ditto for pop-ups, pop-unders and banner ads. The ad-executives seem to think "if only people looked at my ad, we would have great sales".
Sorry but no cigar. Pop-ups/unders advertise mostly useless products and even if we were submitted 24/7 --a la clockwork orange-- to the ads we would still not buy a stupid X whatever video camera.
If estimation on the number of received spam messages are correct, people will eventually be forced to subscribe to "pay-for-despamming" mailboxes, where the ISPs will screen incoming email. True, some hardcore unix fan will still manage to have a real shell on a remote machine, and work harder and harder to update their procmail scripts, but the future won't be their.
.mau.
What a sad thought.
ciao,
... CrazyBrett Industries announced today that it will be creating an "Untrusted Spammer" designation, which will aid ISPs and users in filtering out unwanted mail from clueless companies. Topping the list is TRUSTe Corporation.
Imagine that.
cat TrustE.trusted.senders | tee MAPS.list | tee RBL.list | tee SPAMCOP.list | tee JunkBusters.list ...
Thank you TrustE for making spambusting so much easier
Must make adjustments to my spam filter now as well :)
So, this means squat to the vast majority of spammers. This will cover the mainstream companies that use bulk-mail, but the small timeers who are selling porn, medical scams, credit repair, etc are not part of these groups. These rules don't amount to a hill of beans with these guys. Expect the flow of spam from this group to continue.
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it doesn't say "per person", michael just added that himself, either way you look at it the quote is stupid. If they are saying 1400 per day for the entire internet then surely they are saying that spam is going to be almost stamped out by 2006. If they are saying 1400 per day per person then email simply will not be a viable communication mechanism by 2006. If Stefanie Olsen (the C-Net staff writer responsible for this) was to learn how to use a url we could have some idea where the hell she got this mythical number from. Alternatively someone over at C-Net could proof read her articles and tell her she is smoking crack.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Remember how Real Networks and how their registration system basically allowed you to put any email address and without confirmation they'll start spamming that account? Well I remember TrustE was embarrassed for associating themselves with Real at that point. Guess what? Stumbles and stumbles later these guys are not to be trusted. I don't know of all the other hypocritical actions made by TrustE offhand, but if any of you remember (I know there were quite a few), please post them.
eTrade SUCKS
The only trusted spam that I could think of is a SPAM service. The spammer sends the service the SPAM text, then the service will email them out, after being processed by a removal list. The spammer could not get the service's remove list, because the service is sending out the spam, not the SPAMMER.
Fight Spammers!
- Porn
- Herbal sex-enhancers
- Herbal marijuana replacements
- Viagra
- Get out of debt now!
- Cell phone service in Italy and Korea
- Copy DVDs to CDs! (Sounds like someone trying to sell DeCSS+DivX)
- Laser Printer Toner
- Stock in suspicious-looking companies
With the exception of the cell phones and the toner, all the rest of these products look like stuff out of the back of the Weekly World News. Will I be seeing ads for Tide and Captain Crunch in my mailbox someday?It's only GOOD if the people who are currently sending you spam adopt the Truste seal. Otherwise you'll have the same amount coming to your inbox, and much more being filtered but still wasting your bandwidth.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
If they "elevate" it above ... end users' spam filters, then surely they can be done quite easily for theft of service, or e.g. under the computer misuse act (U.K.), since they are quite clearly attempting to force data onto our systems.
Can someone explain this to me, without working themselves into a lather??
I'm a tech guy....I get (understand) most things. What I don't get is the religious fervor that people work themselves into when they get spam. To put it bluntly, what's the big freakin' deal?? Delete it and move on....or am I missing a larger point?
Better to get spam then junk snail mail...spam doesn't have to be recycled. Spell it out for me...why should I care?
While their 4 criteria are good and all, I'm surprised there's nothing in there about leaving headers intact. After all, the company who's crap I'm learning about often isn't the company doing the email. They may have a legitimate unsubscribe link, but that removes me from the spam companies list for THAT CLIENT. they'll then happily add me to the list for all of their other clients. But if the headers were true I could (in theory) contact the spam co directly and save myself a ton of bandwidth.
hmm, come to think of it, that's probably why intact headers isn't a requirement.
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
It's a point that hardly bears repeating, but TRUSTe is about as valid as an accounting ethics organization run by Arthur Andersen. Its motives are driven primarily by the interests of its largest members, and it accordingly treats the big guns (like Intel and Microsoft) with kid gloves when it comes to privacy issues ... at least, as long as they have a TRUSTe board member on staff.
As others have pointed out, the only good thing about the trusted spam proposal is that it'll be just that much easier to filter out the crap. But it does nothing to address the current spam problem, only provides a method for companies to add to it.
-Baka ni!
Well since Miss Cleo was left out on that list of "authorized" spammers, she must know its doomed to fail.
thirsty*i^2
"Ya I finished that last week, it just doesn't work"
Really! Just wait until they get all this fancy stuff in place and allow users to legitamately "opt-out" using their systems and behold, everyone will! Their mailing lists will dwindle down to nothing forcing them all into bankruptcy, once and for all proving that Spam mail is not profitable if you have to be held accountable for your actions.
When will companies learn that the people will always be one step ahead of them? SOme one will come up with a trusted spam filter and we'll all be back to out normaly schedualed lives.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
This isn't going to mean anything to any of us. It's not like they're going to advertise that they're "trusted", or whatnot, in the mail. That would be dumb, because we could just filter them out.
More likely, there'll be a phone number or something you can call (not listed in the mail, naturally), where you can "verify" a company. Thus, rendering the whole operation entirely useless, save for taking money from some less than bright spammers. Or rich spammers, to whom this cost is meaningless.
First off, spammers can bite my ass. I've implemented everything I can to protect my users and I still get complaints. It's getting ridiculous. Frankly, any program that tries to codify, organize, or control spam, short of snailmail bombs or law, is doomed to fail. How are we supposed to trust people that lie to us in the first place by setting fake headers in the email? Fsck spam.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
procmail:
:0 B
* TRUSTe
/dev/null
Liberty in your lifetime
This is an idea I'm working on to help reduce telemarking calls.
I'm envisioning a simple device that sits on your phone line. When a telemarketer calls you, as soon as you realize its a telemarketer, you activate the unit and hang up. The device takes
over after that.
While the telemarketer is talking, the device will play back every few seconds any of about 20 different small murmers "hmmm" "uh huh" "yeah" "interesting" etc. Then when the telemarketer stops talking, the device will detect the drop in audio and will play back one of several segue phrases "That sounds very interesting, could you tell me more" "Are you offering any other services?" "How much does all of this cost?" "Could you go over all that again so I can take notes?" "I've been interested in this very thing, but I need to make sure its safe. Could you tell me all the safety standards you stand to?" "Could you hold on for a couple minutes, I have something on the stove. DON'T LEAVE!" And so on.
Telemarketers are mostly script readers. The idea will to be to ask vague questions that will cause them to find the most appropriate script. And just keep them going for a LONG time. When the phone line finally goes dead, the device will hang up automatically. Maybe keep track of the longest call. Maybe record them too. The possibilities are endless!
This device probably wouldn't cost more than $20 to manufacture and is the perfect way to keep telemarketers busy when they call you at dinner. Not only will you be able to eat with a smug grin on your face, any other incoming calls will be blocked by the lively conversation. You'll be assured of a meal in peace.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I don't want marketers refining their targeting of me. I come up with enough ways to throw away money all by myself. Now if my savings account could send me occasional complaints, that'd be helpful. Barring that, the less likely I am to be interested in an advertisement, the better!
I for one see the concept here as a good idea. Filtering email so that only messages from specific senders/domains/whatever are accepted may become required. It's a big step forward from the currently popular method of accepting all emails and then blocking 'spammer' senders/domains. It's the same with firewalls, block everything and only allow trusted traffic, or allow all trafic and only block untrusted traffic.
If the "trusted seal" is, in fact, a hyperlink to an image, you get an instant list of all recipients and a good idea of their timezone. You also get their actual computer ID, not just the ID of the mail server that they use. Other information sent includes the browser/mail client ID, the OS used, and any other bits of information included in an HTTP request.
Of course, if the connection goes via a
There may be other controls in the e-mail, or the image, which can feed back other information. It's not as if the average Windows box is hyper-secure.
I don't know if Outlook lets people slide controls into the subject line (say, via a buffer overflow), but if it does, you can also get the date and time the e-mail was delivered to the user, regardless of whether they opened it or not.
If someone is detected as having
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Don't they get it even if its some "trusted spam", I still have no interset in reading that crap. If I want to buy something I go and look for it. I don't know why spammers keep spamming, is it effective? I highly doubt it. It just must be because its cheap (for them). *Or maybe I'm complelety wrong and spamming is a great way to promote or sell a product.*
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
At least for users with domains that are not run by large corporate entities. I have already been designing an email server which will allow each user to maintain lists of trusted email senders, define policies by which they will accept email from senders not on the list, etc. The basic idea is that the user would be able to control their receipt of email by the server. I am sure that better coders than I are already thinking along these lines, as well. As the volume of spam grows, it will be easy to get ISPs and self-managed domains to switch to this kind of email system. The only people who would be SOL (besides the spammers) are those using AOL, Hotmail and the like.
Of course, this also inherently reduces the utility of email, because it will almost certainly result in the loss of mail we want, because human nature is to forget to add things in to filters like this.
-jeff
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Isn't it about time good ol' SMTP is put to rest?
In an ideal mail system, it would work much like the current IM clients do. All email is digitally signed by the sender, and encoded using your public key. Each client has a filter list of signatures they will accept mail from ("friends"), a set of keywords they are interested in ("acceptable spam"), and a set of keywords they will never accept ("objectionable content"). Any message not signed and not encoded using a registered public key (you might have several) will be rejected.
The reason for multiple public keys is you might post to a newsgroup saying you have some stuff for sale. You post a public key with it, specifically to receive things about that message. After a week, or when you've sold your goods, you unregister that key with your mail reader and you never see anything about it again. Spammers would otherwise troll for public keys and your email address. You'd probably give family and friends your 'trusted' public key. If it ever leaks out, you change your key and mail it to your friends, then disconnect your old one.
I suppose this can all be implemented on top of SMTP, but giving servers the ability to reject mail and kill spam would be a big reduction in wasted bandwidth.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
I don't rely on e-mail much anymore, just at work. I have Trillian to keep in touch with my friends. I like it because people have to get my authorization to see me on-line. Why can't email act like this? Heck, it'd only require a client really. It works like this:
.JPG file or a .GIF file, preventing spammers from writing a script to automatically seek authorization.) Then, once it's sent, I get a message on my mail client saying "So and so has requested authorization", alot like ICQ. If I authorize it, they're good to go. If I deny it, then I dont recieve any more messages from them.
Somebody sends an email, it sits on the mailserver. The new mail client checks the from field of the address and attempts to match it up to its address book. If it finds it, the mail goes through. If not, then a mail is sent back saying "You are not authorized to send this mail. Would you like to acquire authorization? Then please send a message back with exacctly this in the Subject 'INSERT PASSWORD HERE'." (that part is an image like a
I'd get this client installed today if it were available. Right now I manually add filters to put people I really want to hear from in a different folder. Everything else sits out in the inbox until I do a cleansing. I'm starting to see patterns in what I'm getting too. I think I'm going to filter the words diploma, enlarge, and celebrity.
"Derp de derp."
Why not.
We all know the Slashdot Effect, and that's just - connecting - to the page.
Why no spam then on ?
Like "Dear Sir, we re glad to say we received you email,
Please take note that my IP Return Flag Header contains a limited EULA. By receiving this email, and all its IP Packet, you hereby accepted to receive 28 800 emails/day (1/sec, business hours) coming from my adress.You also accepted to click on every single banner I send you.
Your business adress will also be sold as often as possible, along with all your coordinates.
Thank you, for it's because of you I had the idea starting this wholesale business.
Beeing removed from this service is not mandatory, but we have to ask you a $1000 fee for unsigning administrativ costs..
Hoping to read from you,
..."
GO GO GO SLASHSPAM
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
First I would have to set up the filter, but that is the easy part the next part gets nasty.
If I am one of the few who require this password protected email, getting my customers to add this password to, lets say the subject line, they will not be happy nor will they get it right 3/4 of the time.
Third and this is where it gets odd, if these passwords became more common at some point you are going to order something online and you will need to supply this password to an outside source that seems trustworthy. They (or a disgruntled ex-employee) will in turn sell your address and password (and a couple of thousand others) to a data mining company who will distrubute it to Spamers and bamm there we are right back where we started.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
It's only GOOD if the people who are currently sending you spam adopt the Truste seal. Otherwise you'll have the same amount coming to your inbox, and much more being filtered but still wasting your bandwidth.
Yeah but 99% of current spammers (or their patterns) are already in my filter. I already can't see all the ads for Viagra, lonely hearts clubs, investing tips and get-rich-quick-by-sending-spam schemes, not to mention whatever it is all those people sending me mail in Korean are trying to sell me. If I read this correctly, this will stop ads from people like Chevron, Anheuser-Busch, Wal-Mart and Colonial Penn Insurance, none of whose products or services I use nor would I be likely to just because they decided that it was now OK to start mailing me on a daily basis. (Not to pick on these companies or imply anything about them other than that they're major advertisers, I just don't buy gas or drink beer, my employer provides my insurance and there isn't a Wal-Mart within 20 miles of where I live.)
I can however see one effect of the Truste seal. In Washington state at least, one of the criteria used to judge whether a piece of unsolicited commercial email is illegal is whether there is intent by the sender to disguise his/her identity. This seal will apparently verify that whoever sent the mail is who they claim to be, which would mean you couldn't sue the spammer on that basis.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The US postal service actualy makes a profit and does not recive any tax money.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Filter it before it gets to your mail program.
elevate it above ISPs' and end users' spam filters
They're putting in digital signatures and links to their verification programme.
This makes their worthless spam easier to filter, not harder.
Thanks guys!
---
Oregon
there's also coverage here at Wired..
If it ties them up longer, it makes the returns from telemarketing lower, making it a less desirable activity for the marketer.
It should be a criminal offense to make a solicitation from a phone line that does not in some way identify the call as such--so that the victims can avoid having the phone ring in the first place.
hawk
Contact me when you need a beta tester. :) I've considered a similar idea where you play back a sales pitch from a different telemarketer, but this has more possibilities for fun.
There's already a device you can put on your phone line that, when activated, recites the relevant sections of the laws governing telemarketing. And our local phone company (Qwest) says it provides a similar service which, according to their TV ads, identifies telemarketers and recites a message along the lines of, "This number does not accept messages from solicitors. Please hang up now." I haven't checked into it yet.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Here in Norway, we've got this nice little thing called the marketing law (this is not an official translation, original text at the end):
.no addresses, if someone gets pissed enough they can have you behind bars. Oh, and if you think "Norway, who cares, I'm never going there anyway", note that we're part of Schengen, so forget pretty much all of Europe then.
2b. Limitation in the use of certain communication methods
It is forbidden in commerical use, without the recipient's prior consent, to direct marketing approaches to consumers by the use of telecommunications methods that allow individual communications, for example electronic mail, text messages to cellular phones, telefax or automated dialing systems (speechmachine).
17. Punishment.
The one who intentionally breaks 2 - 9 in this law or rulings made under the power of this law, is punished with fines, prison for up to 6 months or both if not stronger punishment paragraphs are applicable.
Potentially 16 about fines if a company refuses to change it's marketing after legal ruling against it could also be applied, but I think 17 is much stronger. This one is pretty damn efficent against anyone you manage to track down, also, ignorance of the law is not an excuse, even if it's foreign law. So be careful about spamming
Kjella
Original text:
2b. Begrensninger i bruk av visse kommunikasjonsmetoder
Det er forbudt i næringsvirksomhet uten mottakerens forutgående samtykke å rette markedsføringshenvendelser til forbrukere ved hjelp av telekommunikasjonsmetoder som tillater individuell kommunikasjon, som for eksempel elektronisk post, tekstmelding til mobiltelefon, telefaks eller automatisert oppringningssystem (talemaskin).
17. Straff.
Den som forsettlig overtrer 2 - 9 i denne lov eller vedtak som er gjort i medhold av denne lov, straffes med bøter, fengsel i inntil 6 måneder eller begge deler dersom ikke strengere straffebestemmelse kommer til anvendelse. Medvirkning straffes på samme måte.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
On a more serious note. I have an earthlink account (call them what you will) and they have their spaminator that catches lots of spam, but somehow loads more still gets through. I wish I could access their servers and create an "acceptance list" rather than a denial list.
Wouldn't it be nice (or is there?) if there was a CLIENT email program, that one could program with smart filters that could delete mail on the server before ever downloading it (I think pine can do some of this, but I want a full GUI). You could put people who you would accept mail from reguardless like family and friends that are in your address book. You could set it up so that if you heard about a virus with a specific title you could reject it, even if it was from family or move it to a special folder. You could even set it up so that it validated email addresses, or accept email addresses from corporations that you were potentially interested in or were sending you through a job message bord like hotjobs or dice. Hmm .. this sounds like I should modify my java SMTP and POP beans to do some of this. I think it would make mail take longer to download, but it would help reduce spam in my mail box.
Maybe I just need to filter out messages that say "grow your penis larger" and "tighten up your vagina". Oh and my favorite one is "come see Me and my girl friends play with each other". I shudder to think of what my pre-teen neices and nephews, who are all on lilne at this time, get in the way of email. Oh and my favorite are the HTML pages that take so long to download hang my email program or slow it down. Why should anyone have to suffer like this, just because they allow viewing of HTML!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Legitimate Spam! Now I can start getting into this stuff.
I propose that SMTP should be extended with a "jump-this-hoop" function that could be applied selectively to untrusted senders.
Rather than blocking all email from untrusted senders, or accepting mail from anyone, my MDA should demand that unknowns factor a mid-sized product of two primes before it is willing to accept their email. If they're willing to burn half-a-minute of CPU time, I'll take their message; we can frob the task size to set the cost such that mass spamming becomes infeasible.
All you'ld need to do is hack this into sendmail, and we're good.
Or am I mad?
The FTC article cited above included this nice invitation:
"The FTC invites consumers to forward any deceptive e-mail they receive to: uce@ftc.gov
OK, folks, start barraging them. The more crap that fills their server, the more seriously they'll take the situation. They act in response to a high level of public complaints. So complain.
BTW, many of the comments here say "I don't get why spam works, nobody would ever buy in response to UCE would they?" The bad news is that there are a bazillion morons out there who do precisely this. Well, maybe not a bazillion, but all it takes is 1 receptive cluck out of 100K spam haters to pay for the spammer's time. And they're out there. If nobody ever clicked through, spam would dry up.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Love your
> Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What you are talking about is not spam what you are speaking of is direct marketing done right , that only happens with opt in only mailing lists
good targeting requires good information and most folks are getting shy about sharing this.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Users then get to go through their spam, clicking on the 'click here to be removed' and wasting their time and bandwidth, until the next bout of spam comes through.
Basically, it's a good thought, but there looks (to me) to be so many potential fuckups, especially with the assumption that becuase it is "legit" people want to see it, that I don't think it'll be any better, and will probably be worse, as now you have two different types of spam to deal with. No thanks, it's spamassassin for me!
"The FTC is taking action against deceptive spammers in part because of a consumer backlash: the FTC receives approximately 10,000 individual pieces of spam every day from irate consumers who forward the unbidden missives to the agency, Beales said.
The FTC invites consumers to forward any deceptive e-mail they receive to: uce@ftc.gov "
in other news:
ftc help wanted posting: person to read email needed. must have strong willpower- be able to refuse atractive offers. also, strong stomach.
Lie #1)
It was sent to an e-mail address lifted from a web site I maintain that is only used in mailto tags and never ever anywhere else.
Lie #2)
OK, we know this is bullshit too. But for shits and giggles I went to that address using "links", a trusty, safe, text-only browser.
On that page...
I mean, they don't even go to the trouble of collecting the e-mail address to "remove" and then ignore the request. What a blatant lie. I'd love to know what advance tech they have that can figure out the e-mail address to remove with no params, codes, or other identifying data.
And for those that think the original spam had the e-mail address as a param to the web page, it doesn't. It's just the simple link. And I viewed the original spam using pine, no web bugs or anything else like that in there to pass my info off via referer info.
Hmm, wait, there's more lies than you can shake a stick at...
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
With scum like this out there, legitimate companies have a real concern about their image. What I don't get is, it's in their best interest to do whatever they can to get rid of anything besides double-opt-in lists. Spam has poisoned using e-mail as a marketing vehicle, wanted or not.
Besides, even legitimate companies lie. I NEVER check the "send me info" but I still often get sales pitches from companies I've dealt with in the past.
Seriously, how have these companies reached the conclusion that they themselves are trusted by the general public?
And did it ever occur to them that maybe the reason I don't join Sarah's Work At Home Porn Pyramid for my Free Penis Pump is because I'm not interested?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
disallow anything coming from a foreign domain, hotmail, yahoo, msn, geocities, or aol. :)
:)
I used to have a usa.net address that would let you "filter" spam, but somehow it never seemed to work. Sometimes I wonder if the spammers paid usa.net to circumvent the "anti-spam" measures...
Of course, now that usa.net is a for-fee service, I've moved on, so they can continue to spam the heck out of that account. Matter of fact, I've been known to use it for registering things like Netscape since I don't have to deal with cleaning out its inbox anymore. Bummer.
Supposedly I have a roadrunner account, and supposedly I once had an @home account. Using Linux, and not using their connection software, I've never checked my ISP email accounts...what a shame.
What is your Slash Rating?
"What we are in the process of doing for the first time is to launch a systematic attack on fraudulent and deceptive spam,"
So Hormel won't be able to sell turkey Spam any more?
Spam is spam, period. There's no such thing as trusted spam, or untrusted spam. This is a PR stunt from a bunch of companies that profit from spamming, consulting, hosting, collecting users data, selling softwares and/or selling users data. Is this supposed to make everyone feel good now, just because you put a word "trusted" in front of it?
</Flamebait>
Isn't Google great?
You find such wonderful stuff!
Someone you trust is one of us.
""InfoWorld is reporting that such luminaries as TRUSTe, ePrivacy Group, MSN, and DoubleClick are getting together to develop a "trusted senders" program to certify "commercial email" and "elevate" it above ISPs' and end users' spam filters."
This ain't so bad. This way, you won't have to jump through hoops to find out where to send the invoice for the unauthorized use of your IT resources.
But anybody who tries to sell generic (TM) Spam (R) might find themselves in deep "potted meat product." ;)
What is your Slash Rating?
I don't read chinese, korean, russian, french, or portugese, but get lots of those.
At least the ones reminding me to go vote in turkish elections are sometimes in english (why???)
hawk
Bzzzt, wrong! Thanks for playing!
You should have known that
the quote is what J. Robert Oppenheimer said, quoting from Bhagavad Gita, after the first successful test of the nuclear bomb. Look at you, you just made a fool of yourself.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Then again, maybe not.
So I agree with the other guy: filter any mail with TrustE's signature on it.
sulli
RTFJ.
1) some spammers target what "I" am interested in, I will look at those ads... I have 3-5 spammers that feed me information/products that I am interested in... I also opted into those lists.
2) fried spam with over easy eggs is also good.
all other spam should be banned...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Since any mail going to a nonexistant address gets forwarded to me anyway, I now create a new address for sites that want my addy. Why? Because I know the easy way which sites sell my stuff. If you're AABBCCDD.com and I get a bunch of crap for AABBCCDD@my domain, I make it my personal mission to f*ck you in every conceivable way.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
This seal, which will appear in the top corner of the body of the message, will contain an encrypted digital signature along with information on the valid sender and recipient and the date and time.
Ok, so a seal appears in a corner. Hrm, html? And isn't 99.9% of html email already spam so we can safely dump any html email? The other 0.1% is newbies who need a clue - that they might be a relative is perhaps the only drawback to dropping all html email without even looking at the sender line.
And the seal will be great - they give a date and time and sender - all the evidence one needs to form a proper LART message for folks... AND you get to tell the spamming bozos WHY they won't be getting your money, but their cluefully non-spamming competitors will still have a chance.
I wonder how fast the first place to use this seal as a spam excuse will get blocklisted by folks.
OTOH, if a place does genuine confirmed opt-in then this could be a good thing for them... as long as lowlife spamming places don't abuse it (ha, like they won't).
From the Infoworld article
and
So does this mean that a) the e-mail is HTML only and b) the sender knows that I've tried to verify it?
How does this help me?
Check out The new TrustEd Spammer symbol.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Put them into a large pot, heat untill boil, serve with crackers and beer.
Human Flesh, the other white meat.
OR
Babies? I love babies. Tastes like chicen.
If you do it via the sound card, this would be yet another good use for those old PCs lying around gathering dust. Go do it - then submit to slashdot (on a decent server)!
sulli
RTFJ.
> Dear Chet,_ __
>
> By the way of introduction, I am the Business Development
> Administrator at TRUSTe, the Internet's leading privacy seal program.
> Privacy, the handling of personal information collected from consumers,
> has become the key issues that dramatically shapes consumer trust.
> According to Business Week/Harris Poll, 92% of users mistrust privacy
> statements unless the site uses a third party oversight program. It
> also stated that 78% of online users said they would increase use if
> Internet was more protected and 61% of non-users would more likely to
> begin using the Internet. Clearly, consumers are demanding enhanced
> privacy protection and, responding to these demands, smart companies are
> beginning to take steps to ensure that their customers have control over
> their personal information. To that end, there are several best
> practices that companies can follow to ensure that appropriate, trust
> building privacy guidelines are in place. One of which is to join
> TRUSTe's Web Privacy Program.
>
> TRUSTe, the leading online privacy organization, is the most
> trust-invoking symbol on the Internet. TRUSTe currently has more than
> 2000 licensees, which includes companies such as MICROSOFT, INTEL AOL,
> EXCITE@HOME and many more. The TRUSTe Privacy Seal program was founded
> on the core tenets of Fair Information Practices, which are endorsed by
> the Federal Trade Commission, and is constantly updated. In addition to
> its privacy seal program, TRUSTe has several other programs such as the
> Children's Privacy Seal Program, EU Safe Harbor, e-Health Seal Program
> and the Software Pilot Privacy Program.
>
> One central element in all of these programs is the TRUSTe Watchdog, an
> alternative dispute resolution mechanism that allows consumers to bring
> their privacy-related complaints to TRUSTe.
>
> By addressing consumer privacy concerns, you can take the initial
> steps to gain user trust. If you have any questions about the issue of
> privacy or the TRUSTe program, please feel free to contact me or visit
> or Web site at www.truste.org for more in depth information. I look
> forward to hearing from you.
>
> Best,
>
>
> Israel Canjura, JR.
> Business Development Administrator
>
> TRUSTe
> 1180 Coleman Ave Ste. 202
> San Jose, CA 95110
> Phone (408) 494-4970, Fax (408) 494-4960
> _________________________________________________
>
> TRUSTe http://www.truste.org
> Building a Web you can believe in.
Oddly enough, it is impossible to contact truste.org through their main phone number, you only get a machine. The phone number here is Israel's and he does answer it. So maybe I am wrong, maybe this unsolicited piece of mail is not spam, maybe it it is just what i asked for when I blew out my birthday candles... I guess you could give Israel a call and ask him.
Don't forget spamming services, CD's full of addresses to spam, and spamming programs.
http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
Should have been written as
<A HREF="http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/">http://w ww.impsec.org/~jhardin/<A>
http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
Tried using a Secure Fire Path? It's built into Windows BC.
- Traffic. Email traffic would skyrocket if every first-time communication required several back-and-forth messages.
- Arms race. Do you really think spammers wouldn't be able to crack this? It's no more difficult a problem than OCR, and that's pretty good already.
- Power. If you sent a different JPG every time, you'd need to generate it somehow, or keep a store of them. This means either more CPU alloted to your mail processing, or more storage space. Certainly more bandwidth.
One way it might help is that most spammers use fake return addresses, so your "Please request authorization" message would bounce. For those that have real return addresses (read: "Got a live one!"), you'd just be setting yourself up for more spam.I know the famous saying that you can't apply a technological solution to a social problem, but I don't think that's true of spam. Science fiction is replete with examples of personal assistants (from smart robots, to dumb door-bots, to unconsciously-controlled implants) - this is what we need. A program that can recognize and internalize some basic rules regarding our communication, and then filter incoming traffic based on those rules.
I think that such a system (in a crude form) is already here - many mail clients (including the much-maligned Outlook) have good support for rules. As these gets better, and easier to use, spam will be less of a perceived problem for users.
But more of a problem for ISPs, I think, since filters only work at the client-level, long after the spam has been routed and processed. It'll be an arms race - spammers sending more and more crap, trying to slip through your filters. This is why ORBS and MAPS and the like are great ideas (with perhaps less-than-great execution).
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
The FTC invites consumers to forward any deceptive e-mail they receive to: uce@ftc.gov
Does this mean we can stop using bgates@microsoft.com as a fake e-mail address?
Gee, and it was such a good idea, I thought. Now that The DMA and all is kicking in to rise the tone of spam^H^H^H^H direct e-mail marketing, we can all be happy programmed comsumers of what ever swill^H^H^H^H^H exciting products they want to ram^H^H^H offer!
Well, just in case, I'll go ahead and finish up my paper and see if I can get it submitted for review.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Would you trust M$N to block mail for you? I would not, nor should anyone who reads this sad story of how Micro$quish abused their junk mail filter for hot mail. Like my wife asked in outrage, "They can do that, why won't they block all those 'hot and horny teens' messages'?!"
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
TrustE sold out quite a while back. This is no surprise at all. Their policies and assurances are innefective at best, and that's if you give them every possible benefit of the doubt. I don't see any reason why anyone should care in the slightest whether a site is TrustE certified. It's a meaningless label.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Problem is, I don't trust them!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I once got a spam from Pakistan from a wholesaler of gynecological speculums (if you don't know what that is, don't ask). That was one of the weirdest spams ever, wish I had saved it.
- Have a picture
"Trusted Spammer"
...brought to you by the same folks who brought you:
passive agression
alone together
plastic glasses
Microsoft Works
pretty ugly
postal worker
military intelligence
freezer burn
jumbo shrimp
junk food
student teacher
advanced BASIC
bittersweet
peace force
found missing
genuine imitation
living dead
soft rock
taped live
tight slacks
athletic scholarship
12-ounce pound cake
working vacation
resident alien
same difference
clearly misunderstood
exact estimate
Power Mac
even odds
negative growth
random order
...and many, many others.
Has anyone heard of any technology that would be kind of a DHCP sever for email addreses so that whoever is providing your email account could somehow dynamically assign you an email address everytime you log on?
Why? There is only one good answer: to make a profit out of nothing. Same type of zero cost revenue generating scam^H^Hheme as selling domain names and SSL certificates, where the cost of producing the goods is virtually zero. It is like selling air.
Cheers.
So now every TrustE spam will have a graphic and some sort of applet attached to it? Great, now each spam I get will take a minute to download via MODEM!
Why not filter out mail with foreign from-addrs? There is no way I would be getting legitimate email for a foreign country. And people who have a few friends in different places could just add them to an allow list.
.com
Little of my spam actualy comes from
-anon
I don't just mean e-mail them a complaint. I mean, set up your spam filter to forward all of your spam to all of your elected representatives. Maybe THEN they'll get the message that SPAM can be a problem and that we consumers are $@*#ing sick of it.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is poised to announce an unprecedented law enforcement sweep against deceptive junk e-mail, also known as "spam."
Unfortunately, that happens to be the first line of the article.
Spam is not only definted as deceptive junk-email. Spam is email sent to someone in a broadcasting manner when that person has not signed up for that broadcast. In other words, if you send a message, deceptive or not, commercial or not, to a list of recipients that you don't know, that's spam.
~ now you know
Huked on Fonix wurkid 4 mee.
~ now you know
The problem with spam is that is mostly useless. If spammers refined their targeting strategies users would not complain.
You are completely incorrect. I'm a fisherman. That does not mean that I want to receive hundreds of e-mails every week from companies that sell fishing-related products.
A friend of mine had set up his e-mail to activate his pager if the word "urgent" was in the subject. This was so his clients could contact hime 24/7 if they had a network emergency. At 3-something-AM his pager went off. Why? Some spammer had an "urgent" message for him. Do you think that he'd have been happy if the spam was advertising something related to an interest of his? Of course not. End result: he got disgusted and his customers no longer can e-mail him 24/7 for emergency support.
The simple fact is that we all pay the cost of spam. We pay in higher ISP costs. The companies we work for often spend money to limit the spam in the company e-mail systems. Entire businesses have sprung up with pricey solutions to filter out spam. Just because spam is not physical does not mean that it is received, stored, and delivered without cost.
1.) Traffic. Email traffic would skyrocket if every first-time communication required several back-and-forth messages.
.JPG every time, you could just cycle through them once a week. (This idea is still evolving in my head, btw.) Even if it did, so what? My computer can easily handle rendering a small image (150 by 15) and JPEG/GIF encoding it. My cheapy Compaq 300mhz laptop could handle that, let alone my Athlon desktop.
Would there be a burst in traffic? Possibly. It wouldn't be sudden, though. It's not like everybody around the world would suddenly download and install the client heh. As I said, this would be an email client. The light list of people that I'd want to hear from would generate a very small amount of email traffic. As a matter of fact, I don't think the ISP would even notice it.
2.) Arms race. Do you really think spammers wouldn't be able to crack this? It's no more difficult a problem than OCR, and that's pretty good already.
Not necessarily. This is really simple, actually. The email could be as simple as a question:
'How many smiley faces are flipping you off in this image?' And the image is less than a kilobyte large. Hell, they could do it with ASCII for all I care. The question could be determined by the client program. A user could easily set up his own new question if he wants. He could point to a picture of his family and ask what color his grandmother's hair is. As long as everybody has the ability to change what their question is, then there's no possible way for spammers to write hack programs to answer the questions automatically. If they don't answer the question properly, they can't request authorization. If they can't request authorization, then they can't get email to you. It'll just get deleted. The pic doesnt have to be sent as an attachment either, it could just be a hyperlink to an image on a webserver. In that case, you're paying for your own bandwidth.
As for bandwidth, the only abusers of the bandwidth would be the spammers. If their bandwidth usage suddenly goes way up (i.e. nearly every email they send out gets an email back ), then suddenly the ISP's have incentive to shut these guys down. False return addresses mean they may not get those messages, but if they don't fill out the authorization form, they don't get to you anyway.
If you were to get so much spam that you'd be sending out 100 authentication messages a day, then there could be steps taken there too. Filters could be applied to get rid of most of these messages. At this point, it's in your ISP's interest to help you here. That's an extreme scenario though. If I ever sent out so much email that my provider got shitty with me, I'd probably go hunting for a new address.
3.) Power. If you sent a different JPG every time, you'd need to generate it somehow, or keep a store of them. This means either more CPU alloted to your mail processing, or more storage space. Certainly more bandwidth.
You don't necessarily have to send a different
None of your arguments successfully prove that my idea wouldn't work. Adding an authentication system to my email client would not be difficult. As a matter of fact the ground tools are already there:
1.) Auto responder (remember those out-of-office messages?)
2.) Contact list (remembers people who are authenticated.)
3.) Some sort of filtering system. (rules wizard in Outlook.)
Hmm... I wonder if Outlook 2000 has VB App support. I might be able to implement something like this for people to play with.
"Derp de derp."
- Brother/Sister have you been saved?
- I already told the FBI everything so go away
- You've got to listen to me! I can prove I was abducted by aliens
- Do you use free software? (ala an RMS rant)
- hola, habla Espanol? carful sometime they do
- And of course the clasic when asked for Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so: they're DEAD
Remember these poor people are just mindless drones for a heartless magacorp. Add some spice to there live. But always remember to end the conversation with:Per FTC Regualtions, Add me to your do not call list!
JFMILLER
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
You would definitely be blacklisted by all women if word got out that you had one or more of those instruments lying around somewhere.
Hormel has had a monopoly on Spam for far too long. Its about time that the FTC has noticed this.
I for one am glad that the FTC is on the ball and cracking down...
Yippee! More sites to submit to black hole listing sites. In fact, I think that TRUSTe should make this list available via an XML-RPC server for quick reference and use in various daemons!
I don't have a problem this if certain conditions are met. The first being that there is a size limit on the spam e-mail. The second, and most important, there must be a way for us to easily identify spam from regular e-mail. This way I can quickly and automatically sort me e-mail (spam goes into the spam folder). When I get junk mail it is easily sorted from the regular mail because the regular mail is in envelopes and a different size and shape. Some junk mail is useful (some people to clip coupons and browse flyers for what is on sale this week), just as some spam mail might be useful. As long as it isn't too intrusive and is easily sortable from my regular e-mail I am not too much against it.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-12 -31&res=l
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
From the article:
This seal, which will appear in the top corner of the body of the message, will contain an encrypted digital signature along with information on the valid sender and recipient and the date and time. An appliance installed at the commercial emailer's location generates the digital signature. When the consumer clicks on the seal, they are connected to the Trusted Sender computer, which verifies the digital signature.
So it would appear that the desired chain of events circa 2006 goes something like this:
opens inbox
Hmmm...1,422 new messages today...time to get to work on those...
opens message #1
Okay, this one has the ePrivacy seal...
clicks on ePrivacy seal
Wow, that ePrivacy seal links to www.weight-loss-and-hot-teen-sluts.com, I guess it's a fake...
deletes message
opens message #2
Okay, this one has the ePrivacy seal...
clicks on ePrivacy seal
digital signature verified
Hey, this one's real! It's an ad for www.weight-loss-and-hot-teen-sluts.com! That's one to bookmark!
opens message #3
Okay, this one has the ePrivacy seal...
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
Ok - so now we can RBL microsoft / doubleclick etc. for actively promoting spamming !!
yes I am aware of that
doesn't make it any more grammatically correct just because some swami churned it out
gosh, how foolish I am to enjoy word play
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
..just like you fix a dog or cat. No sense risking any more of the things.
From the NewsBytes article on FTC crackdown:
Alright! I've got about 10K spam emails saved up that I can send them!
Even better, I think I'll set up an alias on each of my domains for this address, then start posting it on web pages and usenet...
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
If you are selling or offering me something I didn't ask for, you are spam. Done.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
Time to write to the California AG's office again and find out what they're doing to enforce this.
The only people in the world who WANT SPAM !!
We just need to get them set up on acouple major spam lists, and we can knock down allot of spammers.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
If it's a GIF/JPG/PNG I could easily right-click and save it, or just do a screen-capture and slice the seal out. Then I slap it on some spam and send it out!
More to the point, what about those of us who may choose not to receive HTML e-mail? How will text-only messages be certified? With an ASCII-art rendition of the seal? Please.
You mean someone is creating a list that all the spammers will want to be on? It's a dream come true! Now I can filter anything on that list and greatly reduce the incoming spam. Brilliant.
The most irritating of spam relies on the presumption that you just had a serious head injury yesterday and dont remember who you talked on the phone with.
Here's a thought - what if I wrote an email client that forced users to read TrustE-authorised spam. Say, before you could read any non-TrustE-spam, you had to spend at least 5 seconds on each spam, scrolling from top to bottom. This would be to put it mildly a trivial addition to any existing mail client (except telnet :-).
Hey presto, you have a spamming tool that is legally enforced in the U.S.A. by the DCMA. Want to remove the spam? You're breaking the law.
Of course, if I was being a *real* bastard, I would prosecute any clients that don't enforce spam, but use my mail-server. Yep, if you're using an unauthorised mail client to strip spam from mail you receive, that's a DCMA violation as well.
Do you doubt this could happen? Imagine having a conversation with someone twenty years ago, trying to explain to them the DCMA, DVD encryption and the Skylarov case.
What if your isp FORCED you to read the 'trusted' e-mails before you deleted them.
... and be bad...
I guess they would need lot$ of in$entive ($$).
But they would take up space.. and
I don't think that would go over too well with educated persons (as in not the ordinary, non-thinking consumer)
say you would have many domains, you can make as many email adresses as you want ofcourse.
Then you make, say 2000 email adresses and make sure they get on most spamlists using them in public on usenet and on webpages on the internet, the spambots will visit (aka you're spamming for the spambots, making them a nice bait). You could refine the process ofcourse but you get the idea.
Now all mail you will receive on these email accounts can be described as spam and you'll get a lot of it. All you have to do now is place all of the spam in a big database and all of the spam email adresses ofcourse. Then you'll get the biggest collection of spam on the internet.
You can have mail-servers contact to your database in order to verify their incoming mail and have them filter out the spam. The mail-servers don't have to send the mail itself, but you could have them send somesort of fingerprint crc check or something. I would gladly pay to subscribe to such a service if it worked and if it wasn't too expensive.
Of what use are stairs in the disposal of junkmail?
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
"The program will allow companies that send out commercial e-mail to attach a stamp to the mail that will ensure the authenticity of the sender and the validity of content..." And email I get from my friends, will that also need a "stamp" to get through? Maybe Microsoft can incorporate this into their Passport strategy. Oh joy...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
These people have some of the worst security / privacy credentials on the planet! To my mind, these are the con-men of privacy. Their attitude towards privacy is like the DOJ's attitude toward anti-trust enforcement.
Well, maybe not that bad.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How nice of TrustE to generate a list of known spammers for us. Now all we have to do is get ahold of that list, and add it to our blacklists. :)
--joe
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
I don't trust TrustE to the extent that I'll modify my client to accept who they say is legit.
Here's an idea I think would help though. Each person makes up a 4 digit code. Then they run that through a program that takes the code and the senders email address and outputs a unique string ID just for that sender or perhaps for all senders from a particular domain. Then when they want to sign up for an email they put the following text. Please add this line to the subject... etc. etc. Maybe sites that have opt-in email lists can offer for them to add that. This way only those sites that have your permission will have the string. And it won't work for them to sell that string to spammers because it is based off of the senders address. Yes. I know there are probably a million flaws in the idea but it puts who you trust in your hands... not TrustE or another agency.
1. Make spam in ANY form illegal
2. Make it punishable by the death penalty
Then let's see how many "get rich quick" ads I get!
What's your problem with prostitution?
This whole story is BS. No crackdown on spam is intended or proposed. Only a crackdown on "deceptive" spam. So instead of getting 50 emails a day which I delete without reading, I will get 50 "non-deceptive" emails a day which I will delete without reading. They still take space on my storage media, they still cost me time to delete. Absolutely no change from the present situation.
A few years ago I got so fed up with spam that I altered the ruleset for my (nags.org) spam filter, so that it now rejects as spam any email from anyone that isn't on my known-good list.
I know, it sounds like a draconian measure. Hell, it is. But it keeps ALL of the spam the hell OUT of my private email, and I keep a separate Yahoo account for correspondence with anyone I don't want to add to the good list.
Now, if I could just find a way to do all that in zero bandwidth and zero CPU cycles...
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
It's a serious question. I'll be able to add this "signature" as a spamassassin rule with a weight of 5 and catch all of these very easily.
Good for me and my customers.
Do you have ESP?
Am i the only one who thinks that this is funny?
;0
A complete fraud.. they have absolutely no power to control the actions of any of their members, even if they are breaking the rules. A spammer can join TrustE and spam like crazy, they will do nothing about it.
The only spammer I would trust is a spammer that would never send me spam because I never intentionally informed said spammer than I wanted to receive email from him, in which case, it wouldn't be spam.
Damn... I think I just logically determined that spammers serve no useful purpose in this world.
No, you've only proven that there's no such thing as a "trusted" spammer, no matter what sort of "authentication" they care to attach to their spam. The matter of their having no useful purpose in the world is accepted as self-evident without need for proof.
I am pleased by this development, though, as I agree with the prevailing logic that these stamps will have to be readily identifiable and therefore filterable.
WTH, it might be as easily as just filtering for the "" tag at the beginning of the mail (it would have to be html for things like "positioning" of the (no-doubt) graphic stamp to work) and rejecting it on that basis. Who _has_ to send me html email anyway? I can notify my friends that I _won't_ accept html mail, and instruct them as to how to turn it off.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
The Camram project is a spam-blocking system.
Camram is at the moment vapourware, but I'm currently talking with them about merging the Camram idea into my Herbivore project.
(Herbivore is a public-key email encryption system which aims to provide effort-free strong email encryption for eveybody).
Every time I get a bloated piece of HTML solicitation, I develop a special degree of disgust and hatred for the offending sender.
Even some stuff I've signed up for is going HTML, often without warning.
Time to shoot some "graphic designers", we've got too many again. Or would those be graphics engineers?
And, is there some reason most of those HTML solicitations have to be so horribly laid out?
Maybe I'm a bad person, but I have other things to worry about.
Gee bill.maly@mcleodusa.net I noticed you try to avoid spam by using "at" istead of "@" In your slashdot account whats wrong with bill.maly@mcleodusa.net are you worries about spam? you just said you have other things to worry about. maybe Mr bill.maly@mcleodusa.net your just a troll?
The potential here is for M$ to gain control over all email. By making Outlook's default configuration to ONLY allow email from Truste sources, and then making their web email a Truste source, or providing easy access to Outlook users to verify themselves through Truste, simple users will only get email approved by Microsoft.
What is the point of this? So we know when the spam is 'trusted'. We can't just filter everything that is not trusted out, unless all we want is 'trusted' spam. About the closest we can do is filter all stuff marked as 'trusted', and then i can't see any spmming companies going for this idea at all.
" Describing TrustE as a privacy organization in "TrustE Launches Trusted Spammer Program" is a joke. The "privacy statements" that I've seen from their affiliates amount to "bend over and pread your cheeks." This is just another maneuver to lend a patina of legitimacy to spam.
Well, it gives me something else to filter on.
WAIT, BEFORE YOU MOD ME, READ!
I hate spam, and even run some bait accounts (like attoparsecs@hotmail.com, feel free to post it on usenet) that are automaticly run through a reporting program.
This is a very good point, most of us don't opt-out for this reason. If there was a system in place that required "approved senders" to have thier lists filtered by a universal opt-out list, great. I would also want a toll free phone number and bussiness adderss included with each address. This way, if someone abuses thier approved sender status, people can whine and sue.
The people who buy the truste certs. Chances are they will reduce the response rate due to the ease of filtration. How ironic. Yet Another Vendor Who Sells Lots of Expensive Nothing (TAVWSLEN) (tm).
SSL Certificate
I have a little contract I send out to any spammers that openly advertise contact points. It stops spam from identifiable sources really fast; so, I sent a slightly modifed one to TRUSTe. The really cool part about it is the encryption technology they will be using makes it real easy to establish the identify of the sender... Here is what I sent.
To: licensee@truste.org
From: [me] hrob@nowhere.com
Subject: LEGAL NOTICE
Cc:
Bcc:
X-Attachments:
This is a legal notice regarding the "trusted senders" program you are initiating.
I do not wish to receive unsolicited electronic mail from any participants in the program who do not have an existing business relationship with me or my company. To put it more formally, here is a contract regarding the participation of my company in the "trusted senders" program:
The following is a contract between the sole proprietorship [my company], herein referred to as HRMS, and TRUSTe.
HRMS is owned by [me] and is located [somewhere] in the state of Massachusetts.
TRUSTe is located at 1180 Coleman Avenue, Suite 202 in the city of San Jose in the state of California
Once accepted, this contract shall apply to TRUSTe and any other members of the "trusted senders" program being initiated by TRUSTe.
HRMS will provide the service of "wasted time" to TRUSTe each and every time a member of the "trusted senders" program sends an unsolicited commercial electronic mail message to HRMS using any covered electronic mail address.
The service "wasted time" is defined to be any amount of time, no matter how short, that HRMS computers or personnel spend dealing with an unsolicited commercial electronic mail message. It may include time spent complaining about the message to relevant authorities, but may also just consist of archiving the message. The extent and nature of wasted time is determined solely at the discretion of HRMS.
For this agreement, a covered electronic mail address is defined to be any of the following:
[address]
[address]
all addresses in the Internet domain [domain].com
all addresses in the Internet domain [domain].com
all addresses in any Internet domain publicly registered during
the contract period by HRMS or [me]
TRUSTe acknowledges that [my name] is a computer software expert and that for the purposes of this contract, [my name] is the sole authority on what is or is not an unsolicited commercial electronic mail message. In particular, the presence of any encrypted information provided by TRUSTe is explicitly deemed irrelevant to this determination.
TRUSTe agrees that the service fee paid to HRMS for wasted time is ten thousand US dollars for each unsolicited commercial electronic mail message received by HRMS. HRMS advises that this is an unreasonable price to pay for said service; however, HRMS will be happy to provide said service if TRUSTe accepts this contract in spite of this advice.
TRUSTe may resell this service at a profit to any member of the "trusted senders" program.
This contract shall take effect when accepted by TRUSTe and shall be remain in effect until cancelled in writing by HRMS.
TRUSTe shall indicate acceptance of this contract by allowing any member of the "trusted senders" program to send a "trusted senders" electronic mail message to any of the covered electronic mail addresses any time between the initial offer date and December 31st, 2011. A "trusted senders" electronic mail message is defined to be any electronic mail message containing the encrypted information normally contained in electronic mail messages under the "trusted senders" program.
The initial offer date for this contract is February 1, 2002.
TRUSTe shall indicate rejection of this contract by not allowing any member of the "trusted senders" program to send a "trusted senders" electronic mail message to any of the covered electronic mail addresses any time between the initial offer date and December 31st, 2011.
HRMS extends the offer of this contract to TRUSTe for the period beginning on the initial offer date and ending December 31st, 2011. TRUSTe may accept this contract in the specified manner at any time during that period even if TRUSTe has previously rejected the offer.
This contract shall be enforced under the laws and courts of the state of Massachusetts.
In the event any portion of this contract shall be deemed invalid, the remaining provisions still apply.
TRUSTe agrees to pay any service fees within 30 days of receiving the invoice.
TRUSTe agrees to pay double the normal fees to any lawyers, collection agencies, private investigators, internet service providers and other professionals hired by HRMS to collect overdue service fees.
TRUSTe authorizes any and all third parties with information regarding electronic mail messages sent by any member of the "trusted senders" program to any of the covered electronic mail addresses to provide such information to HRMS or its agents. TRUSTe authorizes any and all third parties with information regarding the identify of individuals sending electronic mail messages on behalf of any member of the "trusted senders" program to provide such information to HRMS or its agents.
In the event that HRMS obtains a judgement against TRUSTe for overdue service fees, TRUSTe agrees to pay punitive damages of ten times the amount of that judgement to a registered charity chosen by HRMS.
Agreed this 1st day of February, the year 2002 by [me], proprietor of [my coompany].
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
I sent an email to truste asking if they were planning to implement a "do not spam" list of email addresses that have to be removed from any "approved" spamming list, similar to the telemarketers "do not call" list and the DMA's "do not send junk mail" list.
I've not received a reply yet, though.
If they do in fact establish a "do not spam" list then this could actually be (marginally) useful. Of course, since a huge amount of spam comes courtesy of some open relay in Asia....
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I make simple efforts to avoid spam, but don't get my panties in a wad when I actually receive some. Nice AC post...coward.
From what I gathered it will be done similar to security certificates, where there is a link you click on that takes you to a webpages that validates the seal.
At least now we can differentiate between high quality spam and low quality spam... maybe I should set up another trash can just for the high quality stuff...
00110100 00110010
Fuck you and your lameness fileter
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.