Slashdot Mirror
Aggressive Email Filtering Blocks Political Debate
Stephen writes "Many of us have spam blockers operating on our mail. But according to this BBC article, when British members of parliament starting having their emails filtered last month, it stopped them talking about genuine political business such as the Sexual Offences Bill, and prevented them receiving some constituents' emails." This problem has bit me on the bum a few times too. About 1 message in every 250 spam is a false hit. Course thats about once a day :(
I can just imagine the outrage if this happened to the bush administation.
'what do you mean no one got my emails?'
'It seems your.. uh... last name is causing some issues with spam filters sir'
'That's it.. lets bomb the spammers'
I am the lord of the pun. Dance Knave!
...to eliminate all the dupe stories!
it stopped them talking about genuine political business
thats because they no longer knew how to enlarge their penises and missed being notified that some russian woman wanted them so badly that it hurt.
that would certainly stop our gov't, at least..
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
how to balance open access to constituents without being overwhelmed.
Perhaps Parliament could consider some of the steps that the American Congress has taken. The American Congress has a de facto filter built in to prevent Joe Random crazy from flooding their representatives with spurious requests. Most Congressional requests, letters, phone calls, faxes and emails are tossed out unless they come from certain designated people known as lobbyists. These lobbyists have worked hard to cultivate contacts in the Congress, and can get better results from one office visit than 1,000 letters from voters. In a way, they're professional access voters.
So, maybe the UK could restrict access to just professional lobbyists, it works very well in the US.
Without spam, how else would I be able to sit home every day and make $1,000 a week watching TV while playing with my 12 inch penis?
from Scunthorpe.
I'm sure the filters caused many problems with the "Hot, horny housewife" bill and the new "Extra six inches" tax debate.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
you can hate spam for all sorts of reasons, but for me, it's personal.
You need a theme song. Something like Eye Of The Tiger.
Alone is his room, circletimessquare has been waiting for his ex-girlfriend e-mail for two months. When suddenly, he finds it hidden at his spam folder.
He rises his hand, (theme song start) closed fist, and a voice can be heard all over the internet wires: It is personal SPAMMER. I AM GONNA GET YOU!!!
Most of these spammers want to drag you into some sleazy website.
If anyone started making a hobby out of the following procedure (could even be automated) one could push spammers to the brink of profitability and insanity:
1) You receive spam
2) you cut'n'paste the URL to their site into list file
3) you start wegt'ing their websites recursively and repeatedly (say, 50megs on each occasion)
4) you rejoice at the spammer getting a gigantic volume cost
If only 1000 people did this a few times on each spam-advertised website (and on their unmetered flatrate accounts) things would weed out pretty quickly, I guess.
+++ath0
Maybe the announcement was filtered as well...
+++ath0
Alright. render your 5k text message into a 980KB jpeg file and send it away.
Your message was here?
Perhaps, with a flood of spam,
I deleted it.