Slashdot Mirror
Online Marketers to Stamp out Spam?
CodeHog writes "A group of online marketers want to get rid of spam and are proposing a registry base system for transmitting email. They are calling the project Lumos. Computer World has an aritcle on it Online marketers offer new antispam initiative
. Doesn't it seem like these are the same businesses that profit from spam? Even better, this is being proposed by ESPC. The member list doesn't look too anti-spam to me." The obvious issue of course is that most spammers won't follow the rules anyway. My spam is up 20% over the 1st quarter of 2003! Yay!
Unlike most people, I've been pretty immune to spam.
I've been using email regularly for 8-10 years (since somewhere in high school). I never recieved any spam throughout my undergraduate education (kind of before spam got really big). I haven't stuck with the same email account for more than 3 years, so far. I currently have three accounts that I use regularly.
I posted quite a bit to Usenet for a while as a teenager (enough to get banned from at least 1 ISP). Sometimes, but not always, using the defunct anonymous remailer. Maybe that was just too long ago to be much of a problem. At my last job (first one out of college), despite being on a number of mailing lists (WAP Forum, IETF, etc), I never got 1 piece of spam in over 2 years.
On my email account for graduate school, I've gotten 2 pieces of spam. Both were from the same place, Britney Spears' resturaunt, Nyla.
My personal email account has never recieved any spam. Again, I'm on a few mailing lists (Optics Society of America, ISOC, etc). But, I do find newsletters to be a bit of a nuisance. Now, at my latest job I'm getting regular spam. I have not made this email address public. I began recieving spam within the first two days of my account being active. The first one I recieved was clearly a dictionary attack (the same username at a bunch of different domains).
I must say, the IS/IT guys at my old company must've done some great filtering. They were generally good people, always knowledgeable and helpful, so I'm not too surprised.
My current university must also be doing a decent job, despite them not being very strong in computer science (note: I don't study computer science there).
Oddly, the bogus email account I use to register for things, gets surprisingly little spam. Mostly, it just gets the crap sent to me when I forget to check/uncheck the "I'm a gullible dumbass" box.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
Just because you get an email from one of these companies in your inbox doesn't automatically quantify it as spam.
:-P
/. ??? The classic "(insert name here) is trying to take our rights away and make money off of us and they suck. Open source forever and Linus rules my world and does email suck so much when blogging is the communication method of the future".
God forbid that you, as an individual, forget to uncheck a box when you bought your last DVD or CD or book or whatever online. God forbid that you own up to your own impatience and your click click click lifestyle that results in you glazing over or not even caring about the terms and conditions of your latest purchase.
Does it suck that it's so easy to get signed up for some mailing lists? Absolutely. But you know what? The fact remains that even if you make it as easy as possible and have DOUBLE-opt-IN mailing lists, it's inevitable that someone will complain and accuse you of spamming them. It's human nature. I know from experience.
Are there shady companies scouring around for email addresses? Sure, but any established company with a decent bankroll, employees, investors, would NEVER stoop to such levels - it's too much of a risk. You wouldn't believe the legal mumbo-jumbo I have to go through just to send out my monthly newsletters - and I'm not even considering myself one of those "established companies". All conspiracy theories and "Well I had a bad time with..." experiences aside, as a majority, companies DO respect your wishes when it comes to receiving email - they DO respect your wishes to keep your address private - and they DO make sure that you're happy with the way you're treated. They have too much at stake to behave like children and rebels when it comes to mailing you.
Like a number of other issues bouncing around this world today, the SPAM problem seems to have taken on a life of its own. Everyone's all about jumping on the anti-SPAM bandwagon and complaining on message boards about "The Man" and his itchy SMTP trigger finger. Is spam annoying? Sure. I'll be the first to say that something really needs to be done about all the huge penis emails I get every day - I'm fine with my super-python - leave me alone already!!!
Well you know what? These people that do email for a living ARE trying to do something about it and what do we hear on
These companies know that they need email to survive, and so they're making sure that classic penis/Viagra/Nigeria spam doesn't give them a bad name. Pure and simple. You should be glad that something like this is happening. It might not cut down on the solicitations you get in your email, but at least all those ads will be for things you like, or have signed up for. Ever wonder why you don't see commercials for Gerritol & Depends on Cartoon Network at 2:00am? No old people are up watching it because the advertisers have a well-defined and mature methodology of knowing where and how to promote their products on TV and they don't have to worry about their audience getting annoyed by ads for things that they don't want.
Marketing and advertising is here to stay for good, people - it's everywhere, including email. Even if this plan isn't perfect, we should at least be applauding someone for doing something proactively about the issue instead of reactively. Not all ads are "evil". Spam sucks, targeted marketing about things I'M interested in is welcome - if there's no easy way to filter out the good from the bad everyone loses.