Stichting Spamvrij (spamfree.nl foundation) Closing

TeVi writes "Stichting Spamvrij.nl (Spamfree.nl foundation), the authority on spam in The Netherlands, has decided to stop. Spamfree.nl gained international attention for their fight against the CyberAngels spammers. More information can be found on their website regarding the shut-down." It's the classic story of too much work to do, not enough time; meanwhile another reader notes: "Some new anti-spam products out there - but everyone seems to agree that even Sender ID ideas and laws won't do much."

Comments

Sysiphus labour?

[DenDave]

A sad thing but the reality is that there is nothing they could do to stop spam. In fact the only thing anyone can do to stop spam is to stop using email. Yep, the spammer wins.. I abandoned my email account. So in effect he loses because my address is now worthless..

Re:Sysiphus labour?

[Timesprout]

I agree. I was so pissed of with all the junk mail I was getting through the post few years ago I abandoned my house so my address was worthless to them. Altering my lifestyle completely and living in a cardboard box under a bridge can be a bit of a chore but its worth it not to let the spammers win.

Re:Sysiphus labour?

[Schlemphfer]

Cute comparison. But I bet you aren't one of those people who has an email account getting over 1000 spams a day. I'm giving up that account because it's taking me a half hour every other day to sort out the remaining spam, even after Thunderbird's spam filter has run.

By the same token, I bet if some delivery person was putting a thousand unwanted packages in your living room each day, and you couldn't stop him, you would, in fact, choose to move.

need anti spam adverts

[Anonymous Coward]

on TV etc.. encouraging public not to buy from spammmers citing illegality of approach & risks

Looking for an Altruisitiic Billionare

[Alien54]

Maybe some Altruistic Billionaire would be interested in funding these guys. Especially guys who have a track record contributing to the public good. You know, get them some help.

Sure, we know of billionaires giving the money away to things like cancer research. Computer Industry Billionaires

Maybe something like just a mere few hundred thousand or a million for these dedicated warriors. Get them some help.

But then, my cynicism kicks in hard, really hard.

Laws *can* do much

[decarelbitter]

The postings states that people seem to agree on the fact that laws can't do much in the fight against spam. I disagree on that. At the moment many countries have fairly good laws against spam. However, the problem is not with those laws, but the lack of enforcement of them. If countries aren't willing to setup a group/agency/team/etc. that has the technical expertise to trace and track the spammers and the legal abilities to use the existing laws to their full extent than those laws aren't going to be of much help.

Oh, and the correct URL for the English Spamvrij.nl website is www.free-of-spam.nl.

Laws could work

[Monoman]

The problem is that everyone keeps trying to create laws to specifically address the spam problem.

There are already existing laws against fraud, computer B&E, etc.

What needs to changes is obviously the mail protocol and the parties held accountable. I know you could joe-job someone to frame them but in some countries you are innocent until proven guilty.

I guess I just don't get it

[Duke Machesne]

It still doesn't make any sense that there is as much spam as there is: these people are out to make money, right? It's not just to annoy people, is it?

But nobody even reads this shit, do they? Much less buy whatever it is they're selling... do people actually give money to these fuckers?

PopFile

[bstadil]

I don't understand what the big deal is with spam. I implemented PopFile 6 months ago and I get 99.5%+ accuracy. Less than one piece of misdirected mail per day.

Keep the bucket simple and have lots of Magnets for the people you normally interface with and Spam is a thing of the past. You can even put the server on a remote location so it is available when you travel.

You can even redirect your spam to a Gmail account and have it all marked Spam thereby helping Google et al improve their filtering tools.

Re:PopFile

[ravind]

99.5% accuracy is good, but not good enough. It means I still have to scan through the 1500 emails marked as spam to find the 1 email a month that might be a false positive. The only difference is I'm sorting them out in the "spam" folder as opposed to the "inbox".

If I sound overly critical, it's only because I want to emphasize the importance, in my mind of having a solution that is 100% accurate, which I can blindly rely on.

Re:PopFile

[ravind]

You seem to be approaching this problem only from your experience with an email address reserved for personal matters.

Other people have their addresses up on websites because it is important for legitimate strangers to be able to contact them, and it is often their only means of being contacted.

These are also the kind of email addresses that get the largest amounts of spam. In short, false positives can be a problem, and we should be looking at a way of eliminating them rather than taking the "it's a cost I can live with" approach that you seem to advocate.

standard "filtering is not the answer" post

[FooAtWFU]

Filtering! You think spam is "OK" because of filtering?!? My site has had 4 gigabytes of traffic these past six days, and I'll tell you: Most of that is not the httpd. It's just spam spam spam spam spam to the umpteenth degree. Someone has to pay for that bandwidth and the processor power to do that filtering. And it's not the spammer.

Re:The only solution

[Karzz1]

The only solution to the problem is to start paying for sending emails. Before everybody starts modding me down, tell me is it a problem for you to pay 1 cent per sent email?

I work for a company that sends out legitimate email newsletters to several million subscribers a day. Even at 1 million emails a day, that would effectively put my company out of business.

Also, what about all the mailing lists out there. This would have the same net effect on say the Linux Kernel Mailing List as having patents in OSS/Free software.

Re:ddos the spammers

[FooAtWFU]

The problem: Spammers don't run their own websites. You do.

(Well, at least if you use Internet Explorer or don't keep your virus protection up to date, you do.)

Re:Filters... And losing important email.

[Gadzinka]

So you are in a position of luxury where it doesn't matter if a legit email is filtered out every now and then. I'm sure it works for you.

For the last 3yrs I've been working as a freelance consultant. Also I'm the typical guy with anxiety-depression condition, that has problems with everyday life support. And yet, I am able to keep all the important (i.e. paying) jobs w/o worrying about emails lost to spam filtering.

Get a life, get some good spam filter and stop bitching. In fact, for last three years, most of my lost income has been due to overzelous spamfighters (like ORBS etc).

Robert