Spam

[goofyfish]

The FTC is getting involved in addressing the burgeoning problem of spam e-mail. Is it a problem, or simply a way to bring products and services to people? Can it be dealt with the same way as telephone solicitors?

The last thing I want is for the government to regulate my email. Perhaps spam could be dealt with by the free market. Why is it profitable to flood millions of people with highly offensive emails in the hope that just a few will buy your product? Because email is so cheap! Were ISPs to charge nominal fees per email delivered, say 5 cents, spam would make no economic sense.

Of course, we want to make it costly to send spam, but not desirable email. So, charge that nominal fee, and refund it if the recipient indicates the email was desired, by clicking on a good/bad email button. The non-refunded fee could pay for administering the system, at least until spam went extinct.

What other thoughts and ideas have you had?

Peace.

 

[Pollux V]

This is how my email looks:

YOU HAVE 18 NEW MESSAGES

I look at the email. Two of them are useful, the rest are spam. I have hotmail and use FULL INBOX PROTECTION-still ninety percent of the mail I get is spam. I think it's funny, however, watching these salesmen desperately try to get you to look at their products. I got a message from someone name 'jenny' who said in the subject box: this is what I want for valentines day. Needless to say I don't have a girlfriend named jenny but I checked just in case, but it was just an add.

This is when we ask ourselves: is it possible to find a solution to the spam problem?

 

[Xelios]

Here's why I don't use hotmail.

"You have 217 new emails messages"

That's seriously what it says, after 2 weeks of not using it.

 

[Hoth]

My solution would be to tie the spammer to a tree and let every person (all hundred million) who they sent their spam to have a chance to take one whack at them with a baseball bat. Of course the spammer will be dead long before everyone has their chance, but even beating the body would provide a little compensation for the intrusion made by the spammer.

This way, spamming would become unpopular without the need to do something really inconvenient like charge people for sending email. (Imagine if Porfiry got charged for every email notification of new posts that this forum sends out, unless the recipient bothered to actually click something to refund the money each and every time.)

 

[Rick]

Xelios,
Did you take a look at <url>blacksun.box.sk/tutorials.html</url>?
It has nice tutorial on anti-spamming etc...
Ad-filtering too.(Yeah! those stupid comercial that you get while opening sites,those annoying pop-ups etc)...


bye!

 

[Xelios]

I've looked through a couple of the tutorials there. I'm working my way through the Python one right now. I'll take a look at that anti spam one too, thanks

 

[ImaHamster2]

Goofyfish, this hamster thinks your suggestion of a five-cent refundable charge is a good idea. Might also have a minimum threshold such as the first one hundred emails each month are free.

Perhaps a person should be able to set her own email charge. A person might set the charge at ten dollars indicating that they really, really don’t want non-solicited email. The company sending the email could indicate how much they were willing to pay to have the email delivered.

This might be implemented by an ISP as a special email service that pays for itself. MSN makes money and the customer gets less spam. Companies willing to do targeted email advertising should be willing to pay a little. The government need not get involved.

 

[Hoth]

Originally posted by ImaHamster2
Goofyfish, this hamster thinks your suggestion of a five-cent refundable charge is a good idea. Might also have a minimum threshold such as the first one hundred emails each month are free.

That'd mean this forum would be dead very quickly, since assuming even 10% of the members use the email notification feature that's still going to add up to tens of thousands of emails being sent by sciforums. Human nature is such that many of those times the people would be too lazy to click the "refund" button, since it's not them getting charged but rather the sender (sciforums).


Besides, anyone can send mail through any public SMTP with forged headers. You don't know who actually sent the email, and I don't think there's any way to make all email traceable to the sender. Only the stupider spammers use a real email address in the headers or send it through their own ISP.