AOL, MS & Yahoo Unite On Anti-Spam Initiative

dilaudid writes "FT.com has an article about AOL, Yahoo and MS putting aside their differences to combat spam. An AOL VP is quoted as saying "Our customers are telling us it is the number one problem with the internet." Their intended response is "narrowly-defined federal legislation aimed at so-called "king-pin" spammers" who send the bulk of the mails. "

Comments

Huh?

[IAmRenegadeX]

Did you read the article (or even the /. blurb?)

The groups said they were particularly looking for narrowly-defined federal legislation aimed at so-called "king-pin" spammers whom they believe are responsible for the largest volume and most pernicious of unwanted e-mails.

They're looking to legislate the "spam kings" to death, not block mail from them for their collective subscribers. Funny, however, that they continute to ignore "black hole" lists that are actually quite good at deleting/preventing spam.

Re:Huh?

[stratjakt]

That's good. I dont want "black hole" lists at the ISP level.

I dont want providers arbitrarily deciding that some IP block can no longer send me e-mail.

Because then you wind up with some person/comittee with an agenda deciding that I can no longer get e-mail from, say, a group with an opposing point of view. If Bill Gates controlled the black hole list, maybe kernel.org shows up on it. If RMS controlled it, hotmail would show up on it.

It's a bad system, wide open to abuse. Punish the criminals, don't hinder the internet.

Re:Huh?

[rizzo]

Just another personal note on black hole lists. I thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread until somehow my IP ended up on one. My web/email service is on a shared host. The host itself doesn't host any adult content, but the IP that it had recently acquired was listed in the same IP block as pretty much every adult/teen/kiddie porno site you can think of, and most that you can't think of. Ameritech subscribed to the blacklist and so I couldn't forward my domain mail to my ameritech.net account. It was a weekend from hell.

Kingpins not enough. Guarded email, etc.

[dwheeler]

Attacking the kingpins will probably have a very nice short-term effect. But will it really help long term? I doubt it. Instead, there will be new kingpins in countries outside their control, perhaps in places where it's still legal to crack into other computers. Also, there will be a gradual increase in spam from the large number of other spammers.We need techniques that work long-term.

If you're interested in countering spam, please check these out:

1. http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/stopspam.html - essay about techniques to stop spam
2. http://www.dwheeler.com/guarded-email - a paper about Guarded Email, a challenge-response system that might really help.

Re:huh? nobody gets that much spam

[letxa2000]

I get upwards of 100 legit emails a day, with 4 ! very public addresses that are years old, and I never get more than 5 spams a day. WTF are you doing to get that much spam?

That seems hard to believe. If you have domain names registered with your email address, you'll get spam. If your email has been around more than a few years, you'll get spam.

My email has been active since 1994 and while I don't plaster it everywhere I don't make huge efforts to hide it since I feel that being able to send me email is what my email address is for. I get about 100 per day, although with my Bayesian filter now operating I only see one every couple of days.

I find it hilarious that MS and AOL is bitching about spam, their open relays enable most of it. My spam originates from MSN, sHotMail, AOL, Yahoo,

Me thinks you don't know much about spam. Most spam doesn't originate or go through MSN or Hotmail, they just claim to originate there so people like you are fooled into believing that MSN and Hotmail are the cause of the problem.