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EU Rolls out Anti Spam Strategy
An anonymous reader was one of several who noted an article about the latest developments in the
EUs War on Spam. The article is pretty realistic in pointing out that EU Legislation won't be very effective unless Asia and the US do something as well.
The Spam will be no more...it will cease to be!
The article is pretty realistic in pointing out that EU Legislation won't be very effective unless Asia and the US do something as well.
I think that view is actually overly pessimistic. I'd agree that a relatively complete solution won't exist until the US and Asia also act, but it's not like a global solution is going to be decided upon and implemented in one swell foop. If something like this works well for the EU, it provides a viable option for others to follow. Frankly, I think users would be much better off under the "opt-in" method rather than "opt out" which is being considered here. It will all come down to lobbying, of course. In the opt-out corner are the advertising and marketing industries, while the ISP's basically represent opt-in. Users are left on the sidelines.
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With all the laws, bans and implementations of anti-spam measures, I'm curious to know if there is any reduction in the amount of overall spam?
Are we fighting a losing battle? or have the tides turned against the spammers?
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The United States is considering a handful of bills that take an ''opt-out'' approach
I don't get it. Why are the states taking such a reactive approach to this instead of a proactive approach?
Both are useless without the enforcement of the legislatures, but "opt-in" is alot more hassel-free.
Sigh..
before this thing is even PROPOSED, spammers have already implimented a method to deter this
http://www.symantec.com/spamwatch/
they've spread trojan viruses to moron AOL users who's PCs act as proxies thru which spammers safely and anonymously continue their work
It's all about money. Until legislators and the rest of the folks who run systems that understand this, spam will not stop. Spam is a cost effective, if obnoxious, solution for advertising. Even if spam is illegal, unless the entire planet decides to take unified action, spam will not stop - it'll just relocate to places without extradition treaties. You'll end up having to blackhole entire countries to staunch it.
How many people and how many euros is the EU willing to pony up to enforce these laws? Probably about the same amount that the United States ponies up for speed limit enforcement. 55 MPH is the law, not the reality...
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Sadly, this is utter, utter shite.
While it is possible to forge headers, use open relays, trogan poor @Home users PCs, etc, etc then SPAM will not be defeated by legislation.
Tighten the protocols, then we have a fighting chance.
While reading about Iraqis being trained in Linux, I saw that the United Nations supports Linux and its worldwide expansion. It got me thinking (always a bad thing for a /. reader), why can't we have an international group of policy makers for the computing world? They could be created by the UN and eventually form a separate organization which regulates such things as email, domain names, and spam. Sort of like ICANN, but more law enforcement based.
Maybe its just a pipe dream, but a nice thought anyways.
My job is maintaining a Web/E-mail server, and I know just what a pain it is to deal with spam. But, if the government starts to regulate "spam" how are they going to decide what is spam and what isn't? MY favorite phrase is "run your life so the government won't have to, you won't like it if they take over" that makes sense. Don't get me wrong, I despise spam, and want to get rid of it as much as the next person, but how is this going to be controlled? I think we should proceed with EXTREME caution in situations like this or things will just get worse.
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EU thinks "no point, we need the US and Asia"
US thinks "no point, we need the EU and Asia"
Asia thinks "no point, we need the EU and US"
Laws have to start somewhere, and I'm sure there's a reason why all my spam is carpetbombed US crap. I'm pretty sure it's the local laws that are the cause that I have only recieved *one* spam mail in my local language, from a national company, ever. And I sent them a reply stating that next time I would file charges, and I've never heard from them again.
We need a new mail protocol, with proper digital signing and verification of authorithy (does 231.143.211.35 have permission to send mail using the domain name "hotmail.com"?) as well as integrated feedback possibilities both to mail servers, and if possible, to those administratively responsible for a given netblock (e.g. ISP) as well. If spam was more tracable, it would be a lot easier to shut down and blacklist.
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When will Americans learn that leaving it to business will always be an inadequate solution? When will Americans learn that they pay for it either way: taxes or consumer costs (either directly for a company's products/services, or indirectly through other companies' products/servies that the price has trickled down to.) There are some things I would rather the government legislated on as they are *supposed* to be our representatives, whereas businesses only represent themselves or their shareholders.
I don't think legislation is necessary anyway. I'm leary of laws that tell me how and to whom I can send messages. Anyway, if large ISP's would just block ip the sources of the spam (btamail.cn comes to mind) they could do a lot to alleviate the problem. I would rather live with minimal amounts of spam limited by filters than be forced to have laws that forbid it.
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Section 3, Chapter II:
....
Article 1: All unsolicted electronic communications (UCE) intended for commercial purposes, including but not exclusively for the sale of electronic products, personal services, errection-producing drugs, digital images of a pronographic nature, and percentage offers of the fortunes of deceased African dictators, shall follow the code of conduct established in Article 2.
Article 2: all business email sent to and from correspondents in the member states of the EU shall be provided in all four (4) of the following languages: English, French, German, and Italian, plus any two (2) of the following languages: Finnish, Swedish, Irish, Spanish, Portuguese. The Dutch language may only be used as an encryption device for confidential communications.
Article 3 - Sanctions. The minimum sanction for any natural entity sending emails in an illegal combination of languages shall be no less than twenty years of service in the customer service department of the European Union.
I don't see the problem, so long as all EU countries implement this convention fully. That, and castrating spammers should take care of things.
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Even if the person is using a ralksy to send spam from servers in China, the person hiring the ralksy is still liable.
At some point, if the product originates or the money goes through the country that's laws have been violates, you may be able to get it.
Fight Spammers!
I'm going to have to agree with the EU's stance that there should be similar objectives put in place by the US and Asia. I think there should be more countries involved also, but these were the two that were mentioned. In a similar stance, think about having just Iowa and Kansas (random states chosen) with strict anti-spam measures. Fine...spammers will move to VA and PA. Same will happen all over the world.
We DO need a worldwide organization to help curtail this. Isn't this the global economy nowadays? Let's treat it like one.
I would like to see however, someone being proactive. Yay EU! Pity Asia may wait and see. Pity the US may wait and see. If we all act at once, it may send the signal we're serious about this and not just testing the waters and not truly committed to ridding ourselves of this global economy drain.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
A final point: maybe the European approach is more effective, maybe not, but I don't see why legislative uniformity is necessary.... As long as all countries are effective in decreasing the incentive/legality for spammers to exist, does it matter? Silly example -- let's say large country A fined each piece of spam at $1 million, and large country B implemented the death penalty for spamming -- I think spam would decrease a lot pretty quickly. Anyway, if several competing approaches are tried on a large scale, and one is far and away a success, others will follow suit. Please don't posit US government conspiracies to protect spammers -- all the Nasdaq-100 companies hate spam (e.g., Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple). So do 99.9% of their online constituents. Those are the parties US legislators will (at least try to) protect.
Oh, we understand that. Doing something about it when you have an incredibly strong and politically active business sector is rather difficult, actually. And here, with 280M people, political campaigns are very expensive. Hence, congressmen have to sidle up to Big Business.
You have to remember, because America is so huge, we're faced with some interesting problems that Europe doesn't typically consider. Also, since we fashioned our modern democracy first, perhaps we didn't do it best, allowing others to learn from our mistakes in some ways.
However, none of that means that Americans don't realize how we're getting bent over in a lot of ways.
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the companies who want to sell you the damn Viagra and fine their butts off, its all useless.
The only way to stem the flood is to target those who think they benefit from it.
If the VENDOR who uses Spam has to cough up a massive fine, they will put the spammers out of business. It has nothing to do with who sent you the friggin' email but who's trying to get youto spend money. Once it COSTS THEM far more than their RateOfReturn, the Spammers will suck wind.
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It's going to require more than just new laws and legislation. To fix the spam problem, you need to fix the SMTP protocol. At one time it may have seemed ok to allow anonymous, unverified mail services, but today, it is unpractical. A lot can be done to diminish spam if we can improve the SMTP protocol. Source address verification and usable certificate services wouldn't take that long to implement and would drastically reduce the quantities of SPAM.
Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.
We've decided that the enemy is the guy sending a mail message to my inbox, which is exactly the wrong enemy, and the hardest to catch for all the reasons EU officials think it won't work (overseas mailers, hijacked systems, etc).
The enemy is the person operating an ongoing fraudulent enterprise which motivates the guy sending the mail to do that. This is also the EASIEST person to catch, since they have to get paid somehow and the money CAN be followed.
If governments were willing to actually police the fraud, the market for spam-senders would shrink dramatically.
What mystifies me is why they're not willing to do this. Is it some BS gung-ho pro-sales "caveat emptor" mentality? I find this hard to believe, since I don't think any of the products I've seen turn up in ~/mail/bogofiltered are even remotely legitimate -- quack potions, stock and money schemes, 419 scams, et al. We're not talking about laundry soap that really doesn't get my whites their whitest, we're talking about products that are prima faciae nonfunctional.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about this, though, since at least the US government doesn't really care about fraud generally. How long have we been putting up with slamming and cramming? Has anyone gone to jail, or just "admitted no wrongdoing and paid a small fine"? Shit, even the number of culpable execs who deliberately and systematically lied and lined their own pockets on Wall Street who actually will end up in jail is probably countable on my two hands.
Overall I think if the government actually was interested in prosecuting the fraudulent practices and business contained in spam, spam itself would have a serious dent in it.
Instead, they do nothing, letting the spam problem get so far out of hand that the only thing left is to implement heavy regulation of email -- why do I seem to see John Ashcroft smirking in the corner during the otherwise laughable keystone-cops debates on spam?