Slashdot Mirror
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!!
All we have to do is filter any e-mail with this "Trusted Sender" Seal and cut them out.
00110100 00110010
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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 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
Oh dear!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"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
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.
... 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.
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.
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?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.
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 ---
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=truste &op=stories&sort=1
I ran the TrustE "vs." Real story here in 1999, and I spent a little while summing up their history-to-date.
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
Spam is theft. Deleting it takes up time that eventually accumulates...time that can't be billed out. It also eats up network resources in terms of bandwidth and storage space. So, unlike postal junk mail, where the sender pays for postage, *you* pay for spam. Spam is like a collect call that you're forced to accept.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Assuming that you are refering to the US postal service you are 100% wrong.
The USPS receives no tax dollars to pay for operations. Not some, not a little, not a few, NONE! The USPS pays for itself. That's why they have to occaionally raise rates. They can't just go ask for more tax dollars. If you don't like the US Mail, don't use it and you won't be paying for it. Don't you wish all government programs were like that?
Bulk mail, presorted stuff, stuff mailed and labeled by machines is actually cheaper for the Post Office to deliver, but the PO doesn't pass ALL of this cost savings on to the Bulk Mailers. You see, those folks sending out junk mail are actually SUBSIDISING YOU! That Valentine's Day card you're about to send to your grandmother costs you less than it should because of all those coupons and solicitations you receive.
If you eliminated junk mail from the US Mail, the Postal Service would cost _more_ per piece to maintain, the price of stamps would go _up_ and it wouldn't save a dime from the Federal Budget.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
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)
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."
I take it you don't own a house...
Ever since I bought my house I get several times weekly... You are pre-approved for a second mortgage/If your interest rate is above X we can save you money...
I'm not even going to talk about the credit card offers I get....
Actually, "commercial" junkmail is where the P.O. makes most of its revenues. Presorted (as mass mailings are required to be) requires less handling and sorting by the P.O. itself, so costs less to process and deliver. That's why the P.O. can charge lower rates for it yet still make more money from it.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
Well, first of all, spam is theft. But on the practical side ... did you miss that part about
"1400 pieces of spam per person per day in five
years"?
Spamming has no marginal costs. It costs the spammer the same amount (i.e. nothing -- a free one-month AOL account) to send a million spam messages as to send a thousand. Therefore, it is in every spammer's interest to spam as much as possible. That is to say, the demand that spammers place upon the email facility is by nature unlimited.
However, the demand that legitimate users place upon the email facility is finite. Compared to the number of people a spammer targets, a real user only exchanges email with a small number of people. Moreover, real users write their email individually -- they don't send the same message to a million addresses.
If spam is "legitimized", then that infinite demand will take over. The number of spam messages you get will dramatically outnumber the legitimate messages you get from people you actually want to converse with. The email facility will become useless, drowned in the noise, just like many USENET newsgroups.
Interesting you should mention that. When someone sends you junk snail mail, s/he is paying for the privilege. In the United States, the postal service actually makes so much money off of bulk mail that even though bulk mail gets a discount for pre-sorting, it ends up subsidizing non-bulk mail.
The cost of sending bulk mail varies in proportion to the number of pieces of mail sent. If I want to send out a million postcards advertising herbal Viagra, it will cost me about a hundred times as much as if I sent out only ten thousand. I have to pay the postage, as well as costs such as printing, sorting, and getting the things to the post office.
However, as mentioned above, spamming has no such marginal cost. If I write a Perl script to send spam messages, it doesn't cost me any more to send a million than ten thousand. It just takes a bit longer.
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!
How about a reverse-filter? What I mean is, set up filters for people you WANT to receive mail from, and put those messages in a special folder. All the rest of the crap in your inbox can then be safely deleted without looking at it.
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
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!
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.
"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.
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
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...
As much as I dislike spam, saying it is theft because it uses your resources is silly. By that theory, if I send you an email using the address you have listed at /., without first asking your permission, I am stealing from you. Email is made so you don't have to have permission to use it. If it's theft for spammers to send you email without you asking, why isn't it theft for anyone else to do it?
I think spam would be fine as long as there is a working way to opt-out. If I get something and am able to say "don't send me anymore", and it works and they don't, then I have no problem with it.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Thanks for the insights...maybe I am paying for spam, maybe it is taking more and more time from me that could be spent on other things. Big picture, I really, really, just don't care. Maybe I'm a bad person, but I have other things to worry about.
Brilliant idea....It only works for those who have domains. Then again, getting a domain is fairly easy, all you have to do is respond to a spam email soliciting domain registrations.
Jenn
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
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
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.
You might look into an anti-telemarketer service. I have Qwest and they call it "Privacy Plus", it's a service bundled with caller ID for $9.95/month. If someone calls, and their caller ID info is unavailable, it prompts them to press a button and record their name. Then, the system will double-ring my phone, play their name, and ask me to press 1 to accept or 2 to decline the call.
:(
The beauty is, most telemarketers can't press the 1 button to speak their name, so your phone never rings. I've gotten two unwanted calls in all the time I've had it (2+ years), one was from the University I work for, asking me to donate money (they had legit caller ID info), and the other night I had someone from the Special Olympics get through, who apparently wasn't using an autodialer. I just pressed the 2 button, and the computer voice told him to shove off.
Yeah, it's a bit pricey, but I'd rather not spend my time running to the phone to deal with those people. I also don't own an answering machine or voice mail, I have a cell phone with those features, and if it's important, and you have to leave me a message, you'll know my cell phone number. Otherwise, you can e-mail me.
I'd ditch the landline completely, but I have two TiVos that depend on it.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
> 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.
This argument is crap anyway, Americans were able to afford to send letters for over 200 years, long before the creation of mountains of junk mail. So even if the price goes up, it won't be by that much.
- 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."
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.
So, unlike postal junk mail, where the sender pays for postage, *you* pay for spam.
Carrying postal junk mail takes energy. Therefore I have to eat more, and that costs me money. Also, the mass of the mail has a gravitational force which dilates time. And we all know that time is money.
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
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
It sounds drastic, but if you want to get rid of every telemarkter that will every try to reach you ... get a cell phone and cancel your primary line.
Sure you might still use the copper for dial-up or DSL ... in that case, unplug your phone and turn off your modem ringer.
I did this after purchasing my home and it was a welcome relief. I know the tricks with telemarketers, I know the magic words, "put me on your company's do not call list" but I was still getting the calls.
With the cell as my primary number it does not happen. Granted, this might depend on my carrier (EdgeWireless, basically a front for AT&T), however from what I understand most cell providers are very skeptical about selling their number list to telemarketers for fear of the enormous consumer backlash (interestingly enough, it would be for the same root reason we all get so pissed about spam: ergo, we pay to receive spam just like we'd pay, per minute, to receive telemarketing calls on a cell phone).
I hope this helps you out. Yes, I am well aware how annoying it is to change one's primary phone number.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
"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.
I don't buy the fact that junk mail is subsidising regular mail. Junk mail makes up the majority (by size and weight) of the mail sent. If there were no junk mail, the post office would need less machines to sort the mail, and less trucks to deliver it. Less people too.
Of course, it know for sure, we'd need to take a long hard look at the accounting books to see which way the costs would really go.
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
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.
Spam is theft. Deleting it takes up time that eventually accumulates...time that can't be billed out. So, unlike postal junk mail, where the sender pays for postage, *you* pay for spam.
I dunno. it takes me less time to determine if an email is spam (1 second) and throw it out (200 ms to click on the delete button) compared to junk mail (determine if it's junk, average 10 seconds since most are contained in official looking envelopes), and discard (1 second to aim and toss into a wastebasket).
Not that I'm a big fan of spam. I work for a major ISP that has 130,000 customers, and when we get hit with spam, it overloads our servers so bad sometimes that the lights practically dim.
_______
2B1ASK1
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."
Besides the issue of using your resources, spam typically is sent through open SMTP relays, SOCKS or HTTP proxies (and thus the spammers are stealing other people's bandwidth to send the spam), and uses forged return-paths and from addresses, so bounces are typically directed at legitimate networks and/or mail-server HDDs. Spam runs have been documented in several cases to have overloaded companies' networks. If you were paying for bandwidth by the megabyte, a spam run with bounces to your mail servers could definitely cost you. There's definitely theft involved in spam.
That isn't the type of spam being discussed here. You think MSN is sending their spam through an open relay somewhere? As I said, there should be legitimate ways to opt-out and legitimate reply addresses. Most people think fo spam as any unwanted email, including getting your email from a list that they bought. I have no problem with this as long as there is a way to opt-out of it (like telemarketers). The type of spam you are talking about is completely separate from what the actual article is talking about.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Opt-out of how many messages? One person estimates [robertstech.com] that, should bulk email become an accepted method of advertising, we could expect to see on the order of 300,000 spams per month per address. /month. Do you?
I don't have time to opt-out of 300,000
Except that even he admits he is making up those numbers. He is assuming 1/2 of all small businesses will spam, which has no basis in fact. He also is assuming that there is no opt-out program.
Asume that all spam has an opt-out program and assume that all people use this opt-out program. That means soon there would be no spam because everyone would be on the opt-out list, except people who wanted it. That's as plausible as his made up scenario.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
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!
So use "tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'" instead.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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.
You're correct that "1/2" has no basis in fact. Were it not for the efforts of anti-spammers in insuring that spam is indelibly branded as the product of sleazy thieves, the fraction would be closer to 99/100.
He also is assuming that there is no opt-out program.
OPT-OUT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. Spammer "opt-out" lists are simply a fraudulent method of verifying live e-mail addresses. Even if this were not the case, one spam mailing from everyone with something to sell would bury legitimate e-mail under an avalanche of noise.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
If someone bought an e-mail address from anyone other than the owner of that e-mail address, then they are purchasing stolen goods. A purchase of stolen goods conveys no legitimate property right (and, if you knew that the goods were stolen -- which is the case when someone purchases a list of e-mail addresses stolen from the Net -- the purchase makes the purchaser an accessory after the fact).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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.
Time to write to the California AG's office again and find out what they're doing to enforce this.
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.
Actually... they have always been case insensitive and I use them lowrcase myself but put them im upper case here for clarity.
Hammer
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.
Oh, I'm sorry. Discussing it would be "bothering" you? Bandwidth is a limited resource and it has a non-zero value. If marketers are allowed to shift the majority of their costs off themselves and onto me, they will do so.
Actually, an increasing number of people are doing that, and winning. We're not talking (malicious) DOS attacks. We're talking about people sending so many email messages to so many people, that they're overloading entire networks.
What "public network"? My ISP's network is private property. Sure, it's connected to the rest of the world, but so is my telephone. Marketers can't call me long-distance collect and expect me not to get ticked off.
Spam has the potential to end the days of email as an effective communication medium. I don't want to see that happen.
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.
TiVoNET takes care of that problem, and gets you some added capabilities as well.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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.
If you eliminated junk mail from the US Mail, the Postal Service would cost _more_ per piece to maintain, the price of stamps would go _up_ and it wouldn't save a dime from the Federal Budget.
A few points:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Ghandi
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
If someone bought an e-mail address from anyone other than the owner of that e-mail address, then they are purchasing stolen goods. A purchase of stolen goods conveys no legitimate property right (and, if you knew that the goods were stolen -- which is the case when someone purchases a list of e-mail addresses stolen from the Net -- the purchase makes the purchaser an accessory after the fact).
And this is exactly where it gets silly. If your email address is available to the public, then you are giving it away for people to use. If some people send you something you don't want, they haven't "stolen" your address, you gave it to them, by fact you put in out for public consumption. If I look up your phone number in the phone book and call you, I haven't stolen your phone number. If I then sell your number to someone else, they haven't stolen it either. Same goes with your address. If I drive by your house, right down your address, and send you mail, I haven't stolen anything. If something is offered for public use (such as an email address), that goes for the entire public. And yes, email addresses are for public use, that is why there is no authorization needed to send mail to someone. If you want to authorize people before they can talk to you, use ICQ, not email.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Junkmail cannot climb stairs unaided. When you walk up stairs and leave the junkmail behind, it is powerless to follow.
Of course, some of us who live in apartment buildings just chuck it in the conveniently placed trash recepticle right next to the mailboxes (which, btw, junkmail is also unable to escape from, unaided) - but hey - to each their own =)
Get Tivonet (I assume you have broadband)
Rich
I still on occasion need to get emails from people who I have never worked with before. and I don't see how reverse filtering would help
This is why there is no one solution that will work. Reverse filtering a "whitelist" of addresses you know are legitimate is a good start.
Also filter known mailing lists that you've subscribed to into their own folder(s).
Follow that by "blacklisting" known offenders, so subsequent mailings from them get thrown in the bitbucket (or a designated SPAM folder, if you prefer)
Filter anything not addressed directly to you (IE: your address in the To or CC field) into a "suspect" folder. These can sometimes be legitimate mailings, but most often are spam.
This leaves a signifigantly reduced ammount of mail in your main Inbox, and allows you to selectively read what you want to read. The longer your "blacklist" gets, the less actual spam will show up in your "suspect" folder. The longer your "whitelist" gets, the less legitimate email will end up in the "suspect" folder. Eventually, you'll find that you seldom get new mail in your "suspect" folder at all - and when you do, it's most likely spam, unless you're expecting something.
I use Mail::Audit to do my filtering, using the above method - and it has *nearly* eliminated my 50+ spam/day problem. I'm down to 2-3 a week, and I expect that to drop even more when I add razor to my filterset.
so If I want to cost MS money I should sign up for an MSN accout and opt-in to every spammer there is!
Finally a way to break MS!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nonsense. This is the same sort of absurd "logic" offered by people who steal the entire run of a campus newspaper in order to censor something that offended them.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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
An AC wrote:
.Net come out. "Trusted" email will be spam sent by a Microsoft partner. "Trusted" device drivers and programs already exist in Windows XP (complete with the ability for Microsoft to disable "untrusted" drivers).
l ) relies heavily on such concepts as "trusted" identities and "trusted" applications.
> " 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."
Two of TrustE's major sponsors are Microsoft (the Evil Empire) and AOL/TW (member of both the MPAA and the RIAA). Doubleclick is a web advertising company (can you say spammer?). The ePrivacy Group is the consulting firm that came up with the technology (if it works, I bet you Microsoft will be buying them fairly quickly). None of these entities have our best interests at heart.
> This is just another maneuver to lend a patina of legitimacy to spam.
True, but that is only part of what is going on. Expect to see the word "trust" a lot from here on out, especially as the various pieces of
Microsoft's new patent for a digital rights management operating system (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23387.htm
"Trust" is also a key component of Microsoft's new top priority: security. But in this case, Microsoft is "trusting" us to do the "responsible" thing and keep our mouths shut about bugs and security problems.
The only warm and fuzzy thing about this sort of "trust" is the wool pulled over our eyes. The "trust" thing is a PR stunt, fixing the publics perception of security problems rather than the real thing. And for those who are being fooled: No, you can't trust Microsoft. Or the MPAA. Or the RIAA. Or spammers.
All of the false kinds of "trust" above can be described by one word: "GreedE"!
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
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.