Secret Spam Summit Held in Washington DC

CuriousGeorge113 writes "Apparently The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (Cauce) held a secret meeting in Washington with the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to try and convince the DMA to stop spamming. It's a pretty interesting Article at Salon." The DMA seems to like spam and thinks you should too, just like you love all the junk dead-treee mail its members send you. Such a surprise!

Comments

Spam worse than paper junkmail

[grahammm]

As well the much mentioned "Spam costs the recipient, junk snail mail costs the sender", the main difference I see between postal junkmail and Spam is the relevance of the material. Apart from "opt in" mailings (to which I have no objection, otherwise I would not have opted in) from companies with whom I have had contact, all of the mass emailings I receive fall into one of 3 types - either selling email addresses (or Spam softare), adverts for porn sites or "get rich quick" scams. None of which I want to receive. The DMA say about small companies needing to send out details, but I certainly have never received that type of Spam - and as long as it was reasonably targetted (eg not restricted to US residents but sent worldwide, and for a product or service that I might be interested in) would not be so bad as the current Spam.

Re:Spam worse than paper junkmail

[Nohbody]

>Yes, spam is annoying, and so is junkmail, but
>it's better for the environment. And since
>junkmail is inevitable, you people who just throw
>it away get off your lazy butts and recycle it!

If my snail-mail box gets full, say if I'm on vacation, the post office will hold the mail that doesn't fit. With spam, once my inbox is full, all mail gets bounced, and one doesn't have any indication that there was mail from others that wasn't deliverable.

Spam has not reduced the need for paper for snail-mailings. Almost all of the things I see advertised in spam were stuff that, if sent through the US Postal Service, would get the sender thrown in jail for various varieties of fraud.

Snail-mail ads are paid for by the sender, and help subsidize the postal service. Not so spam. With spam, the sender pays almost nothing, and shifts the costs onto the recipient, plus any servers along the way, particularly with messages relayed through unrelated mail servers that were, for whatever reason, left open to 3rd-party relaying. An estimated 15% of every ISP user's bill goes directly to handling spam, whether it's for better filters/blockers, more mail servers, or more bandwidth, or any combination of the above.

Spam is a threat to freedom of speech (not just the type covered by the US Constitution in the 1st Amendment, either), as people hide away, afraid to say anything on Usenet or a web page because they may get their address harvested by some wanker's spambot. With snail-mail ads, simply speaking in public doesn't get you added onto countless mailing lists and innundated with crap.

Need I go on, Mr. "Just Hit Delete"?

Dan "Lumber Cartel (tinlc) Agent #571" Poore

Re:Spam worse than paper junkmail

[sjames]

With spam, all you have wasted is a few seconds of your time hitting the delete button.

True enough for most, but I have seen spam come in on services which charge for bandwidth used (some alpha pagers w/ email, Palm VII, and similar services). That's more like getting a collect call from a telemarketer at 3 A.M. with no option to refuse the charges.

Yes, spam is annoying, and so is junkmail, but it's better for the environment. And since junkmail is inevitable, you people who just throw it away get off your lazy butts and recycle it!

Let the junk mailer recycle it. Stuff it all into the reply envelope (shredded) and drop it in the mail today.

Don't know about spam, but for junk mail...

[bgfay]

...I've found that almost all junk mail comes with a business reply envelope. That envelope guarantees that the company sending you the mail will pay postage on any mail sent back to them using the envelope. (That's step one.)

The USPS will send any package that weighs up to or under 70 pounds. (Step two)

Any brand of tape or glue will allow you to stick the business reply envelope to a large cardboard box which can then be filled with rubbish--my personal favorite is scraps of sheetrock--just keep it under 70 pounds. (Step three)

Remember to make sure that you name appears prominently on the package. This lets them know to whom they should send the next invitation for pounds of rubbish. Sadly, most of the folks I've done this to have neglected to send me a second invitation. (Step four)

Try this at home, but be sure to ask for Mom's and Dad's permission.

(A slighly less arduous version has me ripping up whatever was sent and mailing that back inside the envelope. It's easier but nowhere near as fun.)

A question

[renegade187]

I am a minor, therefore wouldnt spamming me be illegal?

Take for instance, the other day i was sent a spam. This spam wanted me to either buy a product or visit an inappropriate website. That HAS to be illegal.

Re:A question

[Mija Cat]

Sending you porn would be.
Sending you offers on a time share in Barbados would not.
If it's actually happened, try getting your local police to talk to you about it. Yes, I'm serious, if nothing less it's a good civics lesson for ya.

Meow

Unfortunately, spam works

[wowbagger]

The reason spam continues to happen is because it works. A spammer sends out a million messages, and gets 20 live ones. That is STILL enough to make money on.

We have to make it unprofitable to spam. Here are my suggestions:

ISPs:

1. Block all access to other peoples SMTP ports. Force your customers to go through YOUR mailer. Red flag any account that tries to access somebody else's SMTP port.
   
2. Limit your customers to 100 mails a day. Red flag any account that hits its limit, and look into it in more detail.
   
3. Allow customers to ask for the priviledge of sending more than 100 mails a day, but then scrutinize the customer. Perhaps you should charge more for a higher limit.
   
4. Put a line in the contract that says that a customer who uses his account to spam owes you $10000 (adjust the currency symbol as needed). If a customer spams, bill them. If they don't pay, hand it off to a collection agency.
   
5. Secure YOUR SMTP ports. Why should you let spammers make money?
   
6. Educate your customers! Make them READ and SIGN a form about spamming, including the bit about NOT RESPONDING!
   

These steps would prevent the small time spammers from "whack-a-mole" spamming. Those 20 bites I mentioned wouldn't begin to pay for $10000, the hassle of bill collectors hammering on your door, etc.

Linux/BSD distro makers:

1. Don't install sendmail by default! Ideally, installing sendmail should require the sysadmin to go through a detailed setup on sendmail.
   
2. Install a good set of firewall rules by default. This helps secure people's systems and prevent h4x0z and script-kiddies from hijacking the systems.
   

Much of the spam I get is relayed through poorly configured Linux/BSD setups.

My fellow Geeks:

NAIL THE SPAMMERS!

1. Forward spam to spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com.
   
2. Read the headers. Find the relay, and politely tell them they need to check their settings.
   
3. If the spammer is foolish enough to put an e-mail or URL into the mail, traceroute it and get it shut down!
   

If the spammers find that "send spam, lose website" it the law of the land, then it becomes costly to send spam, and the spam will dry up.

Now, I know what many of you are saying: if ISPs start requiring you to use their mailer, how will all of us Unixen use our local sendmail to handle mail. Simple: configure your mailer to forward the mail to your ISP!

Laws are not the way to end spam, we have to make it not worth the spammers while. We can do this (just look at how effective the RBL is, and how well Spamford Wallace was forced to change his tactics.)

Now, if you will excuse me, I must put on my Nomex firesuit.

Flame on!

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[retep]

1.Block all access to other peoples SMTP ports. Force your customers to go through YOUR mailer. Red flag any account that tries to access somebody else's SMTP port.

Not a good idea. There are some legitimit reasons to try to access other peoples SMTP ports. For instance I have setup qmail to directly mail anything since the @Home mail keeps on acting up on me.

2.Limit your customers to 100 mails a day. Red flag any account that hits its limit, and look into it in more detail.

Not a bad idea. Although a limit of 1000 might be more in line with what you would get from a spammer. And if possible monitor how many different hosts all customers try to access through SMTP. If that number gets to be more then say 1000 red-flag the account.

1.Don't install sendmail by default! Ideally, installing sendmail should require the sysadmin to go through a detailed setup on sendmail.

Not a good idea. sendmail is used for more then just relaying spam. Many things need it to send any email at all. However disabling SMTP access on sendmail would be a good way to do that.

2.Install a good set of firewall rules by default. This helps secure people's systems and prevent h4x0z and script-kiddies from hijacking the systems.

I think we can all agree on this one... I've yet to see a distribution that comes with a firewall.

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[wowbagger]

In response to your points:

I chose a limit of 100 mails/day as a reasonable value that would not affect 90% of users. Granted, if you have been away and not answering your mail, you might want to send more than this. You could, however, spread it over a few days. The goal here is to prevent a spammer from sending a significant number of messages. 100 isn't significant, 1000 is, in my book.

You say blocking access to other peoples SMTP ports is bad, and you give a good example of why. However, my points were intended to be general rules, with exceptions given when needed (and I didn't make that clear.) In your case, you should have to ask your ISP to unblock access. (actually, you should hammer your ISP to get their act together, but that's another story. Usually, ISPs are about clueless, and trying to get them to fix their problems is an uphill battle on a neutron star!).

Disabling sendmail is bad since programs us it to send mail. True. What I meant was, "Don't install sendmail as a daemon by default". Having the program around to send mail is one thing, having it setting on the SMTP port all the time another. Your suggestion is what I meant to say.

This is what comes from posting while drinking my morning coffee and watching Batman Beyond in a window whilst I post.

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[wowbagger]

But if most ISPs enforced these rules, then the few that didn't could be RBL'ed. Let them scream into a barrel until they lose their voice.

Second, I meant these rules a general rules with exceptions given as needed. You run a mailing list, you contact your ISP and they bump the limit. I didn't make myself clear on this; but I didn't say "No exceptions".

And I never suggested, nor would I ever suggest, that your ISP read your mail! If you were red flagged, they would contact you and ask you what was going on, not read your mail. An ISP that reads it customers' mail; well, let me paraphase one of my favorite movies:

Hanging's too good for them. Burning's too good for them! They should be torn into little pieces and buried alive!

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[CrayDrygu]

Block all access to other peoples SMTP ports. Force your customers to go through YOUR mailer.

I, for one, have a major problem with this. Let's say AOL (yeah, I use them, get over it) stopped letting me use SMTP servers. Not only would my AOL account have to be my primary mail account, forcing me to wade through spam to find the good email, but what is currently my primary email address (at silverlight.org) would become inaccessable.

There are a lot of other people who do the same thing as me. Whether it's their primary account or not, they have a POP/SMTP account at a site where their web page is hosted. Small businesses with websites probably even do this.

I think your #5 suggestion is a lot better -- your ISP should secure their SMTP ports, and only let users access it. The same can be done for these web-based accounts, I'd imagine.

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[wowbagger]

I, for one, have a major problem with this. Let's say AOL (yeah, I use them, get over it) stopped letting me use SMTP servers. Not
only would my AOL account have to be my primary mail account, forcing me to wade through spam to find the good email, but what
is currently my primary email address (at silverlight.org) would become inaccessable.

I beleive you are confusing POP3 and SMTP. To retreive your mail, you use POP3, which under my suggestions would be totally unaffected.

The only time my suggestions come into play is when you send mail.

For example, I can retreive my mail at mail.myhomemail.notarealdomain at work, because that's POP3. I cannot send mail via the mailserver at mail.myhomemail.notarealdomain, since the firewall at work blocks the access. However, I can send mail via mail.myworkmail.alsonotarealdomain, addressed as coming from me@mail.myhomemail.notarealdomain, and it works quite fine. (this is a real example, only the domains have been changed).

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[dizco]

1.Block all access to other peoples SMTP ports. Force your customers to go through YOUR mailer. Red flag any account that tries to access somebody else's SMTP port.

This is the wrong answer. I pay for an internet connection. Nothing more, nothing less. Letting the ISP decide what i do and do not want/need is a start down a bad path. Maybe they should also block port 139 (winnuke/netbios) and use a forced web proxy. Hey, ICMP can only be used for evil too, right? And certainly users have no legitimate use for incoming connections.

Be responsible for your own shit. If you don't want spam, be careful not to get on lists, and if you do, learn how to filter it. Its no ones fault or responsiblity other than your own. The government has no business making decisions for me, nor do you or my isp.

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[CrayDrygu]

However, I can send mail via mail.myworkmail.alsonotarealdomain, addressed as coming from me@mail.myhomemail.notarealdomain, and it works quite fine.

That may work nice for you, but AOL doesn't have an SMTP server.

I realize there can't be a perfect solution to any problem, really, but I still say your #5 soultion is way better than this one.

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[Our Man In Redmond]

Rather than just saying "you can only send 100 e-mails a day," I would set a policy that says, "unless specifically agreed upon by both parties in advance yadda yadda yadda, our e-mail servers will only send one piece of e-mail every five minutes from any given account. This shouldn't inconvenience anyone who is mailing the latest Internet joke to ten of their friends who've already heard it, God bless their pointy little heads. I send very little e-mail that would inconvenience me if it were delayed by a few minutes -- it's not all that important whether Grandma hears about my new truss now or tomorrow morning.

Of course there would be people who would want to be excepted from this rule. The primary legitimate exception would be for listservs and majordomo-style mailing lists, and there should be few enough of those that the sysadmin could easily monitor them for signs of abuse. There might be some other users who would need to send mail to be received in real-time, like people with e-mail aliases hooked to their pagers so they can jump on a stock opportunity immediately or know when the wife is going into labor. Again, the sysops would know who these people are and be able to monitor them.

Everybody else would have to wait for their mail to be sent (not received -- I can't think of a single reason to slow down incoming e-mail). Anyone who objects would be welcome to have a real-time sending account -- for a deposit of a ridiculously large sum of money, refundable when the account is closed UNLESS the perpetrator is caught sending UCE, in which case the RLSOM is forfeited to pay for the ISP's time and trouble in dealing with the aftermath.

In case you don't know what this could accomplish, spammers depend on being able to send thousands to millions of messages at one time. It's all volumes of scale -- if their response rate is 20 in a million (.002%) they have to send out 50,000 mails on average to get a single response. No one lazy enough to try to make a living through spamming will wait five months for a response to a mailing -- and besides, the complaints will start rolling in long before then.

I suppose there are technical flaws in this idea, chief among which would be that it's still far too easy to relay-rape misconfigured servers in Korea and Russia (not to single those two countries out, of course, but still . . .).It seems to me, though, that implementing a reverse teergrube like this -- especially if it were built into sendmail and similar programs -- would be a piece of cake compared to the ongoing nightmare of dealing with spam.
--

Re:Unfortunately, spam works

[CrayDrygu]

Alright, let's put it this way:

AOL does not support the use of their SMTP servers for members' outgoing mail. They have a proprietary email system for users.

Direct action against direct marketing

[Chuut-Riit]

Normally, I think that I'm a pretty reasonable person, but the notion that the gov't should step in with more regulation of the internet and that bad behavior by marketing slimeballs should be the reason is so completely offensive to me that I find I must agree with the Lumber Cartel approach.

I receive hundreds of emails on a typical day. Probably 95% of these are legitimate, non-spam. While it's easy to "just say delete", I still waste time dealing with the 5% of my email that is spam; not only do these Ponzi scheme salesman disregard my privacy, they have become increasingly clever at camouflaging their subject lines and sender names making it more difficult to delete without opening the mail and reading it to determine if it is legit (also validating the theory that they do, in fact, possess a rudimentary intelligence, perhaps on the order of that of an insect). Over time, this waste adds up (and is merely the wasted time of one person. Add this to the financial burden on infrastructure created by these idiots, and it's clear DMA users are free-riding pond scum).

Asking the gov't for help is going to open a can of worms, and unlikely to result in any useful regulation anyway. Does anyone really think that the voices and votes of those who are pissed off by spam will have any weight against the $$ of lobbying groups paid for by DMA and its members? I don't. The result of any regulation would likely still allow spam to be sent under a set of conditions that would broaden each time the regulations were revisited (which would be like voting in Chicago: early and often).

The DMA and its members understand one thing: profit. As long as they can externalize the bulk of the costs of their activities onto the voiceless entity in the middle (the ISP) and the typical, relatively powerless recipient, there is no incentive for them to stop. But the notion that time is money is a double-edged sword (how is that for a mixed metaphor?). Since neither the ISP's nor the gov't is likely to force DMA and its members to bear the true cost of their activities, perhaps the more technologically savvy among DMA's victim/recipients should do so (without violating any laws, of course). If it is legal for DMA to disregard recipient preferences and send unsolicited email until told to stop, then why should it be illegal or immoral for others to do the same to DMA executives and employees?

Pointless Meeting

[Anonymous Coward]

There is NO POINT in meeting with these people. As a sysadmin that has to deal with spammers and associated scum every single day I can TELL you that these dishonest liars we affectionatly know as spammers don't have a single particle of conscience for what they do. They abuse other people's resources and then expect you to LIKE it.

Recently on the spamtools-list it was revealed that these idiots have their own 'secret' mailing list. It was mirrored somewhere..it wasn't any shock to me to see the names of the biggest net.kooks on that mailing list however.

Nothing will change these people. They have such a twisted view of reality that they think they are preserving freedom of speech by spamming.

Re:Pointless Meeting

[Mija Cat]

There is one valid point in this meeting, as was explained when this news broke on N.A.N.A.E a few days ago.
IF "we" didn't meet with "them", then "them" would have the ability to say "But the anti-commerce radicals wouldn't even talk to us.".
By meeting with "them", "we" have deprived "them" of that excuse.

Unattributed because I don't remember which of the gods of F.R.E.E. said it.

Meow

Re:Just Delete it

[cruise]

Just deleting spam does not resolve the issue that some of us have to pay for every byte we download. I'm not in this group when I'm at home or at the office but when I'm fishing and checking my email via laptop, I pay for every second I'm on that phone. Spammers are stealing my resources to promote their crap (most of it's crap anyway).

Here is my idea for a GOOD opt-in marketing model.


1. Everyone has an online virtual account which allows any other person to deposit funds into it.
2. The spammer deposits pennies or more into your account when they send you the message.
3. A spamer's chance of having you read this message increases with the ammount of money they put into your account.
4. It would be illegal to send spams without putting a minimum ammount per message length. Lets say 5cents per 10k

I feel that this would completely solve the spam issue by making advertisers pay for their email marketing campaigns in a way that effects the consumer positively.

...

[Haven]

[reality check]
Nobody buys stuff when its displayed as an unsolicited irritation. SPAM from either the acutal mail or E-Mail drives customers away from the spammers products. You are wasting your time. I have never met a person who bought something from a SPAM E-Mail, and I'm sure I never will.

Now I know people are going to give me crap about things like "What about television commercials! Those are SPAM too!" Well they aren't. You can change the channel during commercial breaks. Now you say "but you can just delete those SPAMS". Well, it would be a one thing if I got SPAM from the ford motor company, but most of the spam I get is pornography, and I have almost been fired because data protection at a company I worked for was wondering why I was getting E-Mail from 'lesbianlove@sexbot.com' or something. Now I'm not saying pornography is wrong, its just not supposed to be in my E-Mail when I don't want it to. I could have easily been an 8 or 9 year-old checking my E-Mail.

You guys forgot rule number 1 of marketing:
DON'T PISS OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS!
[/reality check]

Re:...

[thraxil]

absolutely true.

the spammers make their money by convincing naive (usually new to the net) companies otherwise.

spammer: for only a small one-time fee, we can market your product to millions of potential customers.

company A: gee whiz! millions of potential customers? that sounds almost too good to be true! here's your money.

spammer: hehe. sucker.

the spammers really don't expect the spam to do anything more than alienate the potential customers. but as long as they can keep finding gullible businesses, they keep raking in the cash.

and unfortunately, there are a lot of gullible people out there.

Re:...

[Haven]

"checking my E-Mail"? I'm guessing you mean checking *their* e-mail. Why would a 8 or 9 your old be checking your e-mail? :-)

Okay... I just E-Mailed you. Now I own your E-mail box. At least thats what you were saying in your post. Oh wait... You responded to my post. Does that make my original post yours? I think you have a lawsuit here.

And the nine year old thing... you must have some serious mental problems.

Too pretencious.

[Punto]

I think we want too much. Internet is not as slow and as expensive as it was 3 years ago (and I'm writing from Buenos Aires, where we have one of the highest telephone rates in the world).
I think it's like tv: we buy the tv, we pay for the cable, we pay electricity. And we have to 'download' all the comercials they put between the shows. On a 23 munites show, I have to waste 7 more minutes of comercials. Sure, I don't want the commercials, but that's what pays for the free show I'm watching. If the show was 7 minutes, with 23 minutes of commercials, nobody would watch it (I'm not talking about those shows that are _about_ comercials :) => nobody would buy time on that show.

So, I that the fact that we have spam proves that spam is prove that it works (sure, spam is cheaper, but there would be no companies selling lists of "100000000000000 non aol e-mails")

Of course I hate spam, and I'd like to, at least, not get spam about thinks I don't care (I'm young, I don't want to "buy viagra on-line".. or "get a free newsletter".. like I'd pay for spam :), or maybe some header, so I can filter it out.. But it pays for a lot of free services out there (actually, what would be of the Internet without porn?)..

Re:Too pretencious.

[seebs]

You missed the point: Advertisers pay for television; spammers do *not* pay for the internet. Spammers, in fact, are a money-losing proposition even before you have complaints - they use much more bandwidth for their $15.00 account than real users would.

Spammers steal resources to deliver ads; it's exactly the opposite of how real advertising funds media.

Spam != Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam is NOT about freedom of communication. That is EXACTLY what these wankers want you to believe.


1) Spam costs the END USER, not the sender. It is akin to junk fax, which _IS_ illegal. Why is no one complaining about the so-called 'right' to junk fax people?

2) Does so-called freedom of speech give me the right to stand on the corner with a bullhorn and drown out everyone else's communications? (taken from USENET)

Brightmail

[sdt]

Hmm, just a while ago a slashdot article about spam reminded me of looking at my own situation. I receive a lot of spam, mainly due to the fact that I once signed many guestbooks (those were the times when I thought you could leave your uncoded e-mail address around without receiving thousands of spam mails) and this made me take a look round the net for some methods against this (I was already using a procmail filter to cut out possible spam).

Anyways, so I came across brightmail. It is, indeed, pretty damn good. It's basically a POP-filter that acts as a proxy between you and your POP server and filters out SPAM. The spam mails are kept for 30 days and can be retrieved through some HTTPS interface. Now, I haven't received any spam in the past three days (it's already filtered out numerous messages). And I'm happy :). You might wanna try it.

Note: no, I don't work for Brightmail or have any kind of relation to them other than using their service.

Re:Make good use!

[Windigo The Feral (N]

Some anonymous coward dun said:

Use this method for used diapers, chicken bones, or trash that you would have to pay to get rid of! If you send a used diaper, it would be giving them a message as to what their mailing is!

No, actually, sheetrock is better than used nappies or trash. Two reasons:

1) The USPS generally will not ship stuff that can be classified as "hazardous waste". Used nappies for the most part are considered biohazardous waste, and the USPS can actually come after youif they get a complaint from the businesswankers that " sent us a bunch of used diapers".

2) The point is to make them pay SO much for shipping for a return-reply envelope that it is not going to be worth their while to ever do business with you again (much how shunning/IDPs, strong AUPs, "spam fines" at some ISPs (you pay a fine if your account is ever closed for spamming) and the MAPS-RBL are meant to make spamming more trouble than it's worth). I seriously doubt that you are going to find sixty-nine pounds of used nappies ANYWHERE short of a nursing home, a large orphanage, or a state institute for the profoundly retarded. :) (By god, if I was going to send them nappies, I'd make sure I had enough to make them pay several dollars--in the tens to hundreds of dollars, yet--to pay for it! :)

The idea of heavy packages works because a) you aren't breaking postal regs by shipping hazmat--everything is perfectly legal and binding and they HAVE to pay the shipping, and b) shipping on large packages is expensive enough to potentially hurt a mass-mailer in the pocketbook and thus deliver a 69-pound LART to the offender (postage is $19.60 for a 69-pound package from my hometown to one junk mailer for a normal parcel; around $53.79 for an oversized parcel...so make sure that in any parcels you send, the length of its longest side plus the distance around its thickest part is more than 108 inches and less than or equal to 130 inches, kids ;).

(un)Fortunately, I don't get too much junk mail...mostly coupons and people persistently trying to give me credit cards (I avoid credit cards like the black plague :). This idea is just evil enough that I LIKE it, though. :)=

Clarification.

[mrsam]

Just to clarify some things that aren't obvious until you read the Salon story.

This "secret" meeting actually happened last year. It was only secret until it actually happened, and the news of it were made public a long time ago.

What the issue is here is that the DMA made a number of agreements and concessions at that meeting, and what the Salon story is talking about is that they are now backpedaling on their agreements. This made the news after several of the participants of that meeting made a number of high-profile announcement calling the DMA on the carpet to account for their lies.

Basically, the upshot of this is that now we have a proven track record of the DMA being nothing but a pack of liars and skunks. That's a pretty direct way of putting it, without mincing words.

So, we can now proceed without any doubt whatsoever on that account. We know what they are after, we know what they want, we know what they will going to do.

And, we'll stop them. Actually, to be technically correct: they'll be stopped. The DMA is making a big mistake thinking that they can bully us in our E-mailboxes the same way that they can bully us in our postal mailboxes and in our telephones. The DMA fails to understand a key difference between the Internet, and postal or telephone marketing. On the Internet, we do excersize some level of control on our mailboxes and on our portions of the network.

We are completely powerless to prevent anyone from stuffing our mailboxes with crap mail, and there's very little that can be done to block telemarketing calls.

However, a LOT can be done to block unwanted and unsolicited junk E-mail from filling our mailboxes. Depending on the tools that are available, you can do a pretty good job at filtering out unwanted crap from your E-mailbox. The DMA is going to wake up one day and act surprised when half the Internet suddenly blacklisted every DMA member that decided to start spamming everyone else's mailbox. The DMA is going to stomp their feet and make a huge temper tantrum, which, of course, will change absolutely nothing. And, that's all that they'll be able to do. The DMA simply hasn't been faced with the situation where the consumer can effectively fight back and defend his privacy. We tried to tell them that they will have to respect our privacy when it comes to our E-mailboxes. Well, folks, the DMA doesn't want to listen to us, so, we'll just have to show them and explain to the the facts of life, and go ahead and reconfigure our routers and mail servers to eliminate all presence of the DMA from the Internet, from our collective point of view.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
--

NO! No! NOOO! Don't just delete it!

[arcade]

That should be a marketing campaign slogan to be used by Cauce in their fight against this crap.

*Absolutely NOT!* You should NOT, i repeat NOT just delete spam. That way, it will be just as with paper-spam in your mailbox. You just throw it away, you don't look at it. And worse -- you pay for it.

When you receive spam, you should *read the headers* (smtp-headers) of the spam, trace it back to its origin, and COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN and COMPLAIN. First to the open mailservers along the path, then to the originating ISP / webhotell, and then to the ISP / webhotells *upstream*.

That way, you'll make sure they are closed down and out of business. At least for a short period of time. Spammers should be *harassed*. One should do ones very best to make their lives miserable. !


--

Excellent idea!

[timothy]

cruise wrote:

Here is my idea for a GOOD opt-in marketing model.

1. Everyone has an online virtual account which allows any other person to deposit
funds into it.
2. The spammer deposits pennies or more into your account when they send you the message.
3. A spamer's chance of having you read this message increases with the ammount of money they put into your account.
4. It would be illegal to send spams without putting a minimum ammount per message length. Lets say 5cents per 10k

This is a great idea! I see two big complications to it as presented above, though:

1) What assurace would the spam producers have that the mail they sent is read? Would there be multiple-choice questions at the bottom which a reader would have to answer as "proof"?

2) Though at some point it's all beans, the idea of populating several millions of accounts with a few pennies seems to my (uninformed) mind pretty daunting. And there would have to be pretty good security checks as well ...

What I'd like to see is a system like the one cruise proposes, but with a catch: the amount to be desposited in order to make something worth reading ought to be determined not by decree (a min. per K or whatever) but by the recipient. If your time is worth $100 or more an hour, spam had better be worth a few bucks in order to spend even 30 seconds scanning it. If you make $6.25 / hr at the local retail store after school, you might be willing to scan spam all day at a slight improvement to that figure.

So when you sign up for the Spamolicious Account, you could specify areas of interest and how much money you'd need to be bothered with it.

Real Soon Now ...

timothy

p.s. One thing to note is that many people *have* granted permission to at least one breed of spammer, which is the one using purchased lists compiled from all the places which have asked you for an email address in order to (for instance) "send you important updates" and say in the fine print that the info may be provided to other "fine" merchants ...

Re:Freedom of communication

[w3woody]

In theory it would be nice if e-mail was marked "spam" in order to simplify deleting it. In practice, this won't work.

Why? Companies who do direct mailing go to great lengths to make sure that you open their (physical) mail--including stooping to sleazy practices such as making the envelop look like an IRS refund check or a bill. (One morgage company's offers to refinance my home comes in envelops which look a hell of a lot like the envelop used by California to send out refunds. The only difference is that the return address in the upper corner is not an address in Sacramento.)

So why should companies mark e-mail differently to simplify deletion? Instead, they'll ignore the bit (even if the law forces them to), and try to figure out ways to make the e-mail message look like it was sent by a personal friend.

I'll also note the reason why "receive pays" direct advertising, such as junk faxes, are fair game for regulation is because by forcing you to pay for the advertising you receive (you do pay for your bandwidth, by the way), is because forcing the listener to listen to speech is a violation of the listener's freedom of speech. That is, our notion of "freedom of speech" includes the freedom *not* to participate in speech. And forcing you to pay for unwanted messages (unlike direct mail where sender pays) is forcing you to give up your freedom not to participate by forcing you to flip the bill.

NO

[Paulo]

Actually, that does NOT solve the problem at all. The reason why spam is bad is not only because it wastes your time, as some people think, but also that it takes *resources from the network* in order to be sent.

A conventional junk-emailer is always limited, to a certain extent, by the costs of printing his ads. On the net, OTOH, sending 2 millions of emails is just a bit more costly than sending 1 million.

Imagine that everybody starts doing that: spammer A sends 1 million mails; spammer B, not wanting to be outnumbered, sends 2 million; spammer C sends 5 millions...

What would happen in a matter of weeks? If your mailbox wasn't clogged with 200 millions of "UNSOLICITED-REMOVE IF NOT INTERESTED" mails, it would be probably because the Internet would have collapsed before.

That is why, when explaining spam, it makes more sense to compare it to the waste of natural resources in the real world (somebody abusing a resource that belongs to the public, that is, to all of us), rather than getting stuck in the "free speech" argument.

Wanker.

[Wakko Warner]

When you're deluged with garbage mail, hounded by telemarketers, and when youre e-mail spool is comprised 90% of make-money-fast.txt, I hope you'll still be happy you live in such a wonderful, glorious capitalist society.

Call me a commie if you want, at least I'll be the commie who's not receiving shit in my mailbox.

- A.P.
--

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Re:You are the coolest

[hadron]

No. The soviets were totalitarianists who payed only lip service to the concepts of socialism/communism.

Mildly Entertaining Vignette

[ewhac]

One day, about two years ago, I received one spam too many, and ended up writing a self-righteous screed, which some of you may find entertaining, which I called The Anti Spam Manifesto. It is, alas, completely fictional. But don't tell the spammers that...

Schwab

Re:Mildly Entertaining Vignette

[sjames]

[LOL!]

It reminds me of an idea I once had for a 'directed virus'. It would spread itself widely, using as little space and cycles as possable. On most systems, it would be self limiting and non-destructive.

However, if it encountered a spam list, or spam software, it would spring into action. That action is still up in the air. re-flashing the BIOS and corrupting the filesystem sounds nice, but appending the spammers real-life name address and phone number to the spam with the phrase "I'm a dirty little spammer, come over and spank me" sounds even better.

Unfortunatly, I'd first have to move to a country that doesn't outlaw such things, and has good bandwith. It is another nice daydream, however.

Lets SPAM the DMA!

[CuriousGeorge113]

Every time you get a spam, forward it to

president@the-dma.org

Spam

[ericfl]

For God's sake don't get the government involved. They're like the proverbial camel's nose in the tent. The government wants to run your whole life anyway. Dont' let them. Don't send flames either. Flamers are worse than spammers. While I don't mind some spam, if you don't want it, you shouldn't get it. Spam IS free speech. Hoever, the constitution does NOT require you to listen to anyone's free speech. I'm a SysAdmin for an ISP. Our dialup clients are instructed to let us know if they are getting unwanted spam. I then send one message to the owner of the offending subnet telling them I will filter out the entire subnet if any of their clients send one more spam email to my subnet(s). It works. If your ISP won't do this for you, change ISP's. Eric F

I find it surprising...

[Zipo Bibrok 5e8]

...that nobody has mentioned SpamCop (http://spamcop.net) yet.

It is the single most effective trace-and-LART tool available.

I don't know if it has reduced my spam volume any, but it sure is fun to fire off those abuse messages.

(And no, I don't work for them, I am just a contented user of their free service.)

So much fun

[Booker]

It takes some time, but it's quite rewarding to see a 404 on a spammer's page after you send in a complaint. Unfortunately, it's usually on some free site and it just pops up somewhere else... but there's still a feeling of contentment to see that you've caused *them* some inconvenience. :)

----

I would NEVER sign up for opt-out

[Booker]

"The e-mail preference service (or e-mps), which has been in the planning stage for more than a year, will maintain a list of e-mail addresses whose owners have registered a preference to not receive unsolicited commercial e-mail. Marketers can then compare their mailing lists with the e-mps database and cleanse their list of those who have requested to be removed."

Uh-huh. And I'm sure that NO spammers will just take that list as a ready-made list of known-good addresses, would they?

----

Handling Porn Spam

[JabberWokky]

Actually, I usually write back something like the following:

----------------------------

> Hi, I'm Jenny, an 18 year old college cheerleader
> who's just so horney. Can you call me at 1-800-555-1010,
> have your credit card ready.

hi, i'm eric. i dont have a creit card, im 8 yrs old. where do you do to schol? i like math. i will call you tonite.

----------------------------

(No, I have not gotten replies back, telling me not to call).

--
Evan

Re:Why would the DMA be against SPAM?

[sjames]

Actually, making an exception to a law would be more effective than adding a new one. Simply: You know all those penelties against vandalizing web pages and crashing servers? Those don't apply if you attack a spammer (and avoid innocent bystanders). It's SPAMMER season!

Or at least that's a nice little daydream.

Re:What's the big deal about spam??

[sjames]

Even if there are 20 of them, that's what, like, 30k of information?

Some people have to pay by the K, others, for each piece of email they recieve (wireless).

What's that? You don't have to pay for junk mail? Balogna!! You don't think that Land's End or Sharper Image adds that into the cost of their products?

I can avoid paying for that by not buying their products (it's my choice). They tend to be more careful about to whom and how many they send since they can see the costs on a spreadsheet. How can a wireless customer avoid paying for the bandwidth they wasted downloading the latest pyramid scheme of the month message?

How spam will stop

[Thagg]

E-mail spam will stop once it gets completely out of hand. What the DMA people don't realize is that as there are absolutely no restrictions on spam, it will grow without bound.

What the DMA folks really want, and what they have de facto right now, is a monopoly on email spam; or near enough to one not to matter. When everybody is getting 100 email spam messages a day, though, every single ISP will find a way to filter it out; and email spam will not work anymore.

We're probably a year away from this now; but we will inevitably get there. If the DMA was really smart, they'd lobby for tremendously tough spam regulation, because that's the only way to preserve the utility of spam.

What they don't realize is that junk snail-mail is self regulating, in that it's pretty darn expensive to send out junk snail-mail. The fact that e-mail spam is free is what, paradoxically, will kill it.

thad

Telephone Spam

[jonathanclark]

I really hate telephone spam because I sleep wierd hours and they wake me up. Seems like everyone is using auto-dialers these days. These things are easily detectable, just say hello and if no one responds in 1.5 seconds then it's an autodialer. I was thinking about setting up a modem that would say an automated "hello" and listen for silence. If it wasn't an auto-dialer then it would beep me and tell the person to hang on a second. Is there an established API under linux for doing full-duplex sound on a modem? I don't mind buying a specific brand of modem.

Thanks!

Re:Telephone Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that seems to work against these "autodialers" is playing the error tone the phone company uses at the beginning of your answering machine message. You know, "bee..bee..beep...the number you have dialed is disconnected or is no longer in service." If you have the "bee..bee..beep" part at the beginning of your answering machine announcement, the autodialer will think the phone number is invalid, and take it off the list. Try this out!

Chris (AC)

Spam you sign up for...

[Anonymous Coward]

> One thing to note is that many people *have* granted permission to at
> least one breed of spammer, which is the one using purchased lists
> compiled from all the places which have asked you for an email
> address in order to (for instance) "send you important updates"
> and say in the fine print that the info may be provided to other
> "fine" merchants ...

*clicks the Post Anonymously button RIGHT now before forgetting*

There's another type, too, and that's a little more of a grey area. Let me tell you a little story.

I work for a Very Large Insurance and Financial Institution ($VLIFI) which Shall Remain Nameless. My division of said $VLIFI has recently discovered "that whole Internet thing" and, like many companies who just don't get, promptly realized that this is a vast sea of untapped marketing resources, etc. The marketing weasels have thankfully not gone so far as to purchase one of those "LIST OF 1000000 EMAIL ADDRESSES" and use those, but what they have done is, in corporate-speak, "forged a partnership" with a certain ISP that offers free email in exchange for targeted ads.

The deal that $ISP has with its customer is the usual banner-ad-running-on-the-screen model that's been getting so much press lately. Buried way deep in $ISP's contract with the end-user, though, is a clause that allows $ISP to use 'other forms of ads at our discretion'. $VLIFI and $ISP put together a deal in which $ISP would send, to its customers, a solicitation to speak with an insurance representative. The wording on the solicitation was very poor; it appeared to be the usual drek that we're all familiar with, and nowhere did it mention that the solicitation was being sent by $ISP -- it appeared to come from $VLIFI directly.

I found out about this plan about a week before the first mass-mailing, and spent the entire week arguing in meetings /against/ it, as I am the ONLY PERSON in this division who has any sort of Internet experience whatsoever. I was assured, however, that a). this was perfectly okay, and b). that the customers of $ISP regularly received such solicitations as a condition of receiving internet access, etc. What no one from $ISP had bothered telling us was that this was the first time they had used this particular marketing technique, and that people were *not* expecting it at all.

The mailing went out. 100,000 pieces of mail.

Five minutes later, the reply address was swamped. Death threats, legal threats, unsubscribe requests, most of which used language you wouldn't ever dare repeat in front of your mother, all of which Yours Truly was responsible for. I stood up and screamed my head off (in a metaphorical sense, of course) to get them to STOP doing this, as it was obviously a). NOT perfectly okay and b). NOT expected, but alas -- embedded in the justifiably-annoyed-complaints were /5/ requests for more information, so it must be working, right?

Over the next two months, we did another three mailings, and the replies were abysmal. I tried putting it into terms that they would understand -- risk analysis, Rate of Response, etc (out of the 400,000 messages sent, there were something like 75 actual leads generated). I tried emphasizing the fact that replying to and processing these responses was eating up MY WHOLE GODDAMN DAY. I was fighting up until the very end to cut off the mailing, because I was sick and tired of pissing people off like that, but to no avail.

So the moral of my little story is this: sometimes what appears to be spam, isn't. But it's still annoying, and people still hate it, and COMPANIES STILL SHOULDN'T DO IT UNLESS PEOPLE EXPLICITLY OPT IN.

Oh, and marketing people are clueless when it comes to the internet, and there's a really good reason for that. They're trying to apply the old business model (where a demographically-targeted mass mailing has at least even odds, if crafted properly, of producing the magic 2% response rate) to something that only superficially resembles it. The problem is that the superficial resemblence is enough to make them stop right there and term it a Good Idea, and not go any further. I crafted a scathing note to the marketing individuals in question after this whole debacle that included /prominent/ links to CAUCE, and it went right over their heads; they'd gotten a response, and to their mind, that was enough to justify pissing off the rest and /totally/ trashing our net.reputation with the people we'd done this to. They don't understand, quite yet, that screwing up like this could be one of the greatest public-relations disasters we've had in ... well, nevermind, as we have frequent public-relations disasters...

I'm looking for another job. I don't want to work for a company that has even a passing /acquaintance/ with spam.

Re:SPAM is illegal!

[sjames]

As much as I hate to see internet anything regulated by government, at least that policy is sensible.