Another Side-Effect of Spam

ghostie writes: "According to this article on news.com.au Telstra (Australias largest Telco) is having some problems with email blacklist operators. They claim that large (previously unused) portions of it's IP range have been black-listed even though they have never been used before. It seems the direct-action approach to stopping spam is having a detrimental effect as well. When will it all stop?"

Comments

Email is useful

[nuggz]

I use email at work, I use it to replace faxes, memos and phone calls. There are systems out there where faxes go to department "inboxes" and even voicemail from your phone can go into your inbox. It is really quite nice, a single place for all messages

Everything is documented, and files can be easily transmitted.
It also works well for international teams (ie Europe/NA/Asia) we are all in different time zones.

IM tends to have message size limits, not everyone uses it. The clients suck for messaging 20 or 30 people the same thing.

Web boards don't work as well when you have many restricted discussions, where email you just send it to who you want to read it.

An idea

[NorthDude]

It mith be stupid, but here it is...
My idea is that emails protocols should not be replaced, they shoul be enhanced to support identification of the sender.
When someone knocks on your door, you look at who it is before letting them enter your house, no?

So a standard could be put in place which would enable you to filter the sender at the relay level instead of in your mail box. Well known address from you would be allowed to enter your mail box freely, while other one would have to identified themself well before being allowed. Just like when a rep of some phone company ring at my door, they have to identify themself well, and then, only then, if I'm interested in what they have to say, I let them enter. (Which is never the case hehe). So email protocols would need to be added a very complete identification section. There is no obligation to fill it for sure, but if you don't, people can always filter you out at the source. Once this ID is filtered out, it is put on your "black list". Then, when you connect to your mail server, it would send you the ID's of all the mail they have for you, and you would send them back a list of the emails you want to reject. This way, you get only what you want, and you save bandwith on unwanted spam. Am I crazy, or is it possible anytime?