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
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.
TrustE should just make membership in this program opt-out instead of opt-in.
Personally what I do is setup a seperate address for all my mailing list mail, and then dump everything with the word "remove" into the trash for my personal mail address. Of course i still glance at the trash, just to make sure.
"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
How can any thief be trusted? How can any vandal be trusted?
Spam is theft. Never forget that. Sending email to someone requires the use of resources which that person legitimately owns or controls, and you do not. Therefore, if you are habitually sending email to people who do not want it, you are appropriating resources to which you have no right. That's stealing.
It doesn't matter if the commercial offers made in a spam message are themselves legitimate or if they are fraudulent. A legitimate advertisement wrapped around a brick and thrown through my window is just as offensive to my rights as a fraudulent advertisement delivered in the same way.
Opposing spam is not about opposing commerce, or "commercialization of the Net", or the free market. It is about defending private property from trespass and theft -- and defending a useful service (the email facility) from its ruination. For if spamming is "legitimized" by crooks such as these, the email facility as we know it is not long for this world.
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
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."
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
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