I had this idea several years ago, but I couldn't find a way to make it profitable or feasable. It has many weaknesses, but I wanted to be proactive, not reactive and this idea relies on spammers following the law, which we have seen many times before just isn't the case. In a perfect world that allowed spammers to punch you until you objected, and they have to remove you from their list when you fill out their form (or whatever).. here is my idea:
"My" company collects opt-out urls, email addresses, and other schemes used by spammers to fullfill their obligation to provide you with a way to refuse future spam. This database is then shared with all its "members". Each member has a client that pre-emptively fills out the do-not-send mechanism as the database is updated. Essentially allowing it's members to opt out BEFORE receiving the junk.
The database, or database updates could be posted to Usenet, emailed, downloaded, or bit-torrented. There is no master email list that spammers could use to hard target members. The down-side is of course that by filling out an opt-out, you may be confirming your email address and opening up to more spam than before. (I don't know if it is illegal for spammers to take your confirmed opt-out email address and then sell that to other spammers.) Maybe, If I had a perfect list of all spammers though, and sent an opt out to every single one, they wouldn't be able to send me junk (legally) because I have already opt-ed out from everyone's list and it wouldn't matter that everyone had my email address.
Of course this scheme does nothing to prevent illegal spam.
An Additional feature could provide mechanisms to remember which sites have been filled out so that legal action can be placed against those who send disregarding the opt out action. Possible sending automated emails to the fair trade commission so they can follow up on illegal spam (because we know they are short on leads).
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I had this idea several years ago, but I couldn't find a way to make it profitable or feasable. It has many weaknesses, but I wanted to be proactive, not reactive and this idea relies on spammers following the law, which we have seen many times before just isn't the case. In a perfect world that allowed spammers to punch you until you objected, and they have to remove you from their list when you fill out their form (or whatever).. here is my idea: "My" company collects opt-out urls, email addresses, and other schemes used by spammers to fullfill their obligation to provide you with a way to refuse future spam. This database is then shared with all its "members". Each member has a client that pre-emptively fills out the do-not-send mechanism as the database is updated. Essentially allowing it's members to opt out BEFORE receiving the junk. The database, or database updates could be posted to Usenet, emailed, downloaded, or bit-torrented. There is no master email list that spammers could use to hard target members. The down-side is of course that by filling out an opt-out, you may be confirming your email address and opening up to more spam than before. (I don't know if it is illegal for spammers to take your confirmed opt-out email address and then sell that to other spammers.) Maybe, If I had a perfect list of all spammers though, and sent an opt out to every single one, they wouldn't be able to send me junk (legally) because I have already opt-ed out from everyone's list and it wouldn't matter that everyone had my email address. Of course this scheme does nothing to prevent illegal spam. An Additional feature could provide mechanisms to remember which sites have been filled out so that legal action can be placed against those who send disregarding the opt out action. Possible sending automated emails to the fair trade commission so they can follow up on illegal spam (because we know they are short on leads).