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Selling Your Attention to Spammers

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-fair-to-me dept.

Dotnaught writes "Can the free market stop spam where technology has failed? As described in InformationWeek, Professor Marshall Van Alstyne of Boston University School of Management has co-authored a soon-to-be-published paper that proposes an "attention bond" -- money put up by email senders that recipients collect only if they consider the message a waste of time. Supposedly, this market-based filter performs better than a perfect technology-based solution, with no false positives or negatives. A company called Vanquish already has a working model. Is selling one's attention the answer to spam?"

2 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. What do pundits say? by bogaboga · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    This seems to be an important topic in today's computer world. I am suprised that I have not seen any view from pundits before.

    The trouble is some of the pundits know so little to even know that they, (the pundits) know nothing. We live in interesting times, don't we?

  2. Re:The problem with spam is weak enforcement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Just divert some of the FBI Baltimore people who do child pornography, who are already experienced at tracking people on the Internet, off that job

    I was with you until there. As annoying as spam is, it's not in the same league as child pornography - that really does scar children for life. There will be no diverting of anti-child pornography teams.