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Trustic Anti-Spam Service To Close
An anonymous reader writes "I recently received an email from the anti-spam service Trustic saying: "We have decided to close the Trustic service. We have determined that the system as it currently is designed will not achieve the level of accuracy that we require, and an inaccurate system is worse than no system."" We covered Trustic's anti-spam service, which billed itself as "a community-based block list that prevents untrusted servers from sending spam", as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
I recently received an email from Microsoft saying:
"We have decided to stop distributing Windows. We have determined that the system as it currently is designed will not achieve the level of reliability and security that we require, and an unreliable and insecure system is worse than a non-MS system like Linux or MacOSX."
Then block all mail from odd-numbered IP addresses. A full half of all spam comes from those addresses!
The only 'bad' thing is false-positives.
Oops!
If you lower your blocking to prevernt false-positives, you still have a service that is desired even if you don't catch them all...
Ah, change it to only block prime-numbered IP addresses. Much fewer false-positives, and you are still blocking some spam.
Seriously, I'm really impressed that Trustic had the ethics to back off when they determined that the system didn't work. I hope they'll be back with a better system.
I agree.
This reminds me of a story:
A guy was speeding along many others along a highway. He was later pulled over by a policeman. The guy cracked, "But everyone was speeding, why did you get me?" The police then asked, "Have you ever gone fishing?" "Sure.." "Have you ever caught them all?"
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
If they had only had more customers, I'm sure they could have held on longer.
If only they had found a quick, easy, inexpensive way to solicit hundreds of thousands of new customers using the Internet they could have stayed alive!
Alas, it could not even filter out their own mass email...
This is why we need vigilantism. Spammers are less likely to risk spamming if it puts their families' lives at risk! And no, I AM NOT KIDDING HERE.
Hmmm. You need to mass-market your idea to the internet public at large. EMail is ideal in this regard. Our database of 500 million guaranteed fresh email addresses is sure to net you internet gold at the speed of electrons!
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
How about we set up a market for spammers, modeled after the Iowa Electronic Markets. Except instead of buying futures in political candidates, you buy futures in a spammer dying. If people stand to make millions from a certain spammer biting the dust then the market forces will apply themselves naturally.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
I do support Columbian death squads. So I only buy pot from Columbia.