SendMail CTO Sounds Off On Spam and FTC 233
CowboyRobot writes "Eric Allman takes his well-deserved turn in commenting on the state of spam, the dark future, and the need for intervention.
He calls spam an "arms race" where "in the long run everyone loses (except the arms dealers)."
As you might imagine, he's on our side, and he does a good job of clearly describing the current state of spam, and the possible solutions."
I like the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, most telemarketing is done from in-country because of LD charges. Not so with e-mail. It's pretty hard to enforce US laws on a Taiwan spamhaus.
Ah well, every little voice against spam warms me a little at least.
Re:I like the idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I like the idea (Score:3, Interesting)
If the do not spam registery, as proposed by at least some lawmakers, penalizes the beneficiaries of the spam, then the true source will still be subject to the regulations. Sure, some offshore businesses will continue to spam, and some big guys may move off shore, but it really will nullify many of the cost advantages
Re:I like the idea (Score:2)
This is the hard part. How can you make it a crime to traffic or abuse a list of email addresses?
Salt the list with honeypot email addresses. Only supply the list under contractually binding terms and conditions which prohibit its abuse. Then just monitor the honeypot inboxes, and be ready to whack any Do-Not-Spam list-abusers for breach of contract so hard th
Re:I like the idea (Score:2)
As you might have guessed, it is not much more expensive. VoIP termination companies in the US provide very inexpensive calls into the US. It is no more expensive to call the US from India than it is from Omaha if you have decent enough volume (not much) to negotiate a direct deal with a VoIP provider. The only increase in cost is the Internet Access is likely a
Re:I like the idea (Score:2)
That's true, but bare in mind that most (>90% ?) spam is from US companies advertising US products and stocks...
Also, if the idea takes up, more countries could implement this...
Re:I like the idea (Score:2)
The big time spammers are already involved in various illegal activit
Re: I like the idea (Score:2)
Even if this were true, how does that help us spam-sufferers living elsewhere?
Re:I like the idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I don't buy that that is true, but it's completely irrelevant to my point. Even if most spam does currently originate in America, if the U.S. somehow passes and enforces an effective anti-spam law, there is effectively zero cost involved in these spammers moving there business out of the States and still spamming Americans.
The same is true for any country that illegalizes unsolicited e-mail.
This is one reason (among many), why spam is
Re:I like the idea (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I find balkanizing the network to be philosophically repugnant, there is a second step that is not often discussed in the context of US legislation against spam.
Once spam is banned in the US, we (the network operators) have to block traffic from netblocks assigned to countries that are friendly to spam. The legitimate business and communications needs of those countries will then drive them to enact their own anti-spam policies to get off the block lists. If their only need for the network is to send spam, then they will soon find themselves isolated and ineffective.
I don't like it, but to me it looks more and more like the lesser of evils...
Partial solution (Score:2)
This is only half of it. Apparently much of the spam received outside the US originates from Florida. I can't see this changing, even if the US passes an anti-spam bill sinc
What about conspiracy? (Score:2)
The solution there is fairly simple. Spammers have a product they want to sell. That product will usually originate in the country where the spam recipient lives (ie: U.S.A.), so even if the spammer hides behind foreign remailers you can still identify one o
Re:I like the idea (Score:2)
actually about 1/2 of my spam is in russian and 1/4 is in some asian language.
i only speak english.
The more I think about it...... (Score:4, Interesting)
Spammers spam because they make money. Educate people to ignore spam, and the spammers don't make money. Bingo, no more spam!
I know it sounds like a pipe dream, but what other options are there?
Re:The more I think about it...... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The more I think about it...... (Score:2)
That's like telling your kids to ignore the high-pitched painful squeeling noise that has continually been emitted in your neighborhood at all hours of the day and night for the past 10 years.
"Honest kids, after 3 or 4 months of your ears
Re:The more I think about it...... (Score:2)
Like I said, spammers do this because they think they can make money. Right now, they DO make money spamming people. If they don't make any money, why would they do it? Because they enjoy
Re:The more I think about it...... (Score:4, Funny)
Just one at a time. Let's start with Eddie Marin.
Re:The more I think about it...... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The more I think about it...... (Score:2)
Spam is far too slippery to actually legislate, but we are already developing pretty decent methods for filtering. Perhaps spam is an arms race, but we seem to be a step or two ahead of the spammers and it is costing me no money and only a small amount of time to stay there.
I think the real trick is to make things like not putting your real e-mail address on forms (paper or electronic) and setting up
Re:The more I think about it...... (Score:2)
That might help. Though it only takes a few suckers.... (Either among the customers, falling for the spammers' sales pitches, or among the spammers, falling for the spam-software sellers' sales pitches.)
Actually the vast majority of my "spam" right now is the result of a virus that could just as well have been written by a teenager on a whim.
As long as the system is so fragile
Re:The more I think about it...... (Score:2)
Therefore, worthless are methods that greatly reduce but fall short of complete eradication?
Well deserved indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
why can't mail servers talk to each other? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:why can't mail servers talk to each other? (Score:2, Informative)
This is almost exactly what the DCC does. This strategy works very well for certain types of spam, but it doesn't catch everything and needs manual intervention to allow legitimate mailing list traffic through.
That already exists. (Score:4, Informative)
It's called the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse (http://www.rhyolite.com/dcc). I use the DCC as part of my SpamAssassin configuration (sitewide, called by Exim) and around 85% of spam I receive is already listed in the DCC. The latest version (2.60) of SpamAssassin, plus the SBL plus the DCC works as a very effective shield. My JE (link in the sig) describes my recent experience with SA 2.60.
Re:That already exists. (Score:2)
Make sure you use the DCC with SpamAssassin rather than merely alone, though (sounds like you don't have this problem, but just for the education of other readers). The shorter and more filled with garbage a message is, the more likely DCC will not be able to form the same fuzzy checksum as a different message.
Product exists (Score:2)
I think such a product already exist. Lemme remember the name of the company that makes it... soft-something? Ah, there I remember: Softmicro!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Economic mechanisms don't need to impose a cost (Score:2, Insightful)
Fraud and the money trail (Score:4, Insightful)
I do not believe that a "do not spam" law would work; at worst, the law of unintended consequences guarantees we'll end up having to give John Ashcroft a sperm sample to get a license to run a mail server due to the slippery slope of regulation. At best, we'll have an empty law that punishes no one.
Instead we've got Ashcroft forming an American Schutzstuffel to protect us from ourselves, and his big anti-crime initiative is to go after people that make bongs. Gee, I feel safer already.
As long as people willing to commit fraud or other "entrepenuers" feel they can lie, cheat and steal via email with no consequences they will, and someone will be willing to deliver the message for them. Get the seller via the money trail and you stop the spam, and can probably nail the spammer as an accessory as well.
Re:Teaching a spammer through a 15-inch hammer (Score:2)
And don't belive for a second that they'll criminalize this anymore than the do-not-call list was criminalized; it will
Junk Class Mail. (Score:2, Insightful)
The first question was, "What is spam?" This is much harder to answer than it at first sounds. For example, some people define spam as "any e-mail I don't want to get," even if the mail is for a list that they really did sign up for. As one panelist pointed out, some people really do want to receive pornography. Most people agreed that getting a newsletter that th
Person to person communication in the future (Score:5, Interesting)
The spam problem has to do with the whole future of person to person communication, as well as the whole future of adverticement. Whichever way it will be solved, a very likely outcome is that in 10 years it will no longer be possible in any way to get in touch with someone you don't already know from outside the Internet, and the first decade of Internet will be looked back upon with nostalgia as the only decade of totally free communication. This is because the real problem lies in the initial contact.
You might argue that we can still communicate via boards, chat channels and similar things, where you can give out crypt-keys to those you wish to continue communicating with, but remember that these will be the next target for adverticing after open email collapses. I'm sure adverticers will even write AI's to simulate people so that they can lure the crypt-keys from innocents.
SPAM filtering technology (Score:2)
So my question really is, is the state of spam-filtering still improving, or have we reached a plateau where the spammers will just find more and more ways of defeating them. Much of the spam I receive contains characters like: Viagra so the filterin
Re:SPAM filtering technology (Score:2)
White listing (Score:2)
If everyone would just ... (Score:4, Insightful)
"If everyone would just ..."
I hear those words about spam and proposed solutions all the time. But the fact is, and will always remain so, that you cannot get absolutely everyone to do so (whatever that might be).
Consider the first possibility: "if everyone would just stop sending spam". Most of the spam comes from about 200 or so different spam gangs. Most of the rest comes from a few thousand naive victims that try it once or twice, get cut off, and never do it again (and thus losing their investment into the spamware and "list of millions" they paid some spamgang for). Already, 99.999% of internet users do not send spam. A solution that requires getting so close to a percet 100% just isn't possible.
Now for the second possibility: "if everyone would just stop reading the spam and buying from spammers". Spam works because the costs to spam senders is so utterly low, that even sending to every internet user is a lower cost than trying to trim the list down to those few people that really want what the spammers are peddling. This goes along with "just press delete". But it doesn't take much in response for the spammers to actually make a profit from their spam runs. And spammer's for hire are making money even if their clients lose money, so as long as there is a supply of naive vendors who are willing to part with their money to get a spam run in their name, spammers profit. Again, this is a case where closing the gap between 99.99% of people who don't even read the spam and the 100% needed to make spammers and their clients go away, is just not going to happen.
But there is a third possibility: "if everyone would stop using ISPs that permit spam". If even so much as 50% of users who are using ISPs that permit spamming were to cancel and switch to a better ISP that doesn't, that would definitely have a substantial effect on that ISP. I bet even 10% would get noticed, although I think a bit more, like 25%, might be needed to get some of the worst ISPs to act. Of course many people do whine about things like "there is only one ISP here" (not anywhere near 50% face this problem) and "it costs me money to switch" (it costs the victims of spammers even more money for you to continue to support an ISP that is able to give you a discount by accepting pink money from spammers). If we were to simply identify the top 10 worst ISPs for permitting spam to come from or through their network, and get a whopping 25% to 50% of their customers to leave (preferring to go to the top 10 best ISPs for not permitting any spam in or out), this would make a substantial impact and cause some CFOs to panic. And this doesn't require anywhere near 99% to be a successful anti-spam campaign.
The above campaign can also be pushed harder if many of us refused to accept email from those ISPs (and thus anyone in their network) as a sort of boycott against spam support. Of course there will be whiners here, too saying "You have no right to block my email since I don't send spam" (but if they are supporting a spammer anyway, guess what).
My whole point is that we need to avoid any "solutions" that make it necessary for absolutely everyone to do something. There will be plenty of people that won't. Instead, the solutions we need are the ones which only require a practical number of people to take that action. If you don't like the ones I propose, then propose your own and say how many people would have to act to make it work.
Re:If everyone would just ... (Score:2, Funny)
I hear those words about spam and proposed solutions all the time. But the fact is, and will always remain so, that you cannot get absolutely everyone to do so
THE SOLUTION TO SPAM IS INFORMATION (Score:4, Funny)
The easy solution to spam is to make the identity of the spammer known to all.
Do their neighbors know that they live next door to a spammer?
When a customer walks into your store, do you know if they are a spammer?
When someone hits on you at a bar, do you know if it's a spammer who is hitting on you?
When you're on highway patrol and catch someone speeding, do you know if is the spammer that is speeding?
When you walk down the sidewalk and pass by a car parked on the street, do you know if it is the spammer's car?
When your kids go to school, do they know the spammer's kids?
When you are delivering (paper) mail, do you know if it is the spammer's mail?
When you are serving food to someone, do you know if you're serving food to a spammer?
When you receive a call to 911/poison control, do you know if this is a spammer calling 911/poison control?
Spam is a community problem, and the community is the one best able to deal with it.
All the community needs is information.
The problem will solve itself.
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
How elitist can you get? The problem isn't that people are unwilling to learn anti-spam tools, the problem is that they need them in the first place.
Anti-spam tools also does not prevent one of the most annoying things with spam, especially when on a narrow line: You have to spend time and money downloading the spam before it can be identified as spam.
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your last paragraph, however, shows that nevertheless you completely don't get it, and, by completely, I mean that you really sound as clueless as can be on the topic of spam.
Let's see how many standard spam-thread replies are required for your two sentences of nonsense at the end.
- SPAM is an arms race - single tools don't work, because eventually they will be beaten, as has happened to ALL tools as yet, including bayesian filters.
- SPAM tools such as you suggest are basically for the 3l337. you are basically saying "spam is not my problem if *I* can avoid it. this is a) antisocial and b) bs, because
...
- your note does not in any way address those billions of dollars of bandwidth wasted before spam gets to your personal box.
- if you stop 99% of spam now, by a rough guesstimate of what the parent article alluded to, you can roughly expect to get 100 times more spam than you currently do in 2.5 years time. ergo, problem not solved.
- you still haven't worked on the issue of spam definition.
In short, any article, post, or message that claims that Product X is an acceptable solution to SPAM just doesn't get it.Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
Your responses really do make you loo
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things mumblestheclown is pointing out is that the fact that you personally are currently managing to filter out your spam is *not* sufficent evidence to prove that the software you are using will be an effective long-term solution.
The software you're using (however clever it is, however hard it tries to "learn" new types of spam), has easily exploitable flaws. The spammers haven't gotten around to exploiting them because it probably hasn't seemed worth their while--probably not enough people are using the same type of filter yet. But they will, eventually. At which point filters that take a fundamentally new approach will be required. Which the spammers will eventually figure out a way around. Etcetera.
Most spam filters are designed with the goal of filtering out spam that is similar to currently circulating spam; they make no attempt to resist an intelligent person who has spent some time thinking about how to circumvent the filter.
Bayesian filters are no exception here.
--Bruce Fields
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
This is a bit like pointing out that exploiting some buffer overflow is difficult, and concluding that buffer exploits will never happen. The problem of course is that it only takes one person to figure out the exploit and automate it.
I haven't read the papers about bayesian filters (reccomendations? I'd be interested), but I'd think the first attack would be on the tokenizer. What does a
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
You mean this one [paulgraham.com]?
In other words, spammers have already started to attack bayesian filters (or at least filters that identify keywords) and DSPAM is using
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
I've never doubted you on that. I use spam filters myself, and find that they work; that's not the point. Your original claim was that spam filters were now good enough that we no longer have to worry about the problem of spam. What the rest of us would like to point out is that the fact that some spam filters currently work reasonably well is *not* sufficient evidence to establish that they will work
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
Deary, deary.
You obviously aren't seeing the sharp end of the wedge and the people trying desperately to increase both the false positive rate and therefore the value of these tools. It is like an arms race, and anyone who has even approached the subject knows that arms races have no end. Better to simply slap a lawsuit on trading entities that use spam as a sales vector and dr
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
I'll pencil it in for after over-unity power generation, Microsoft secure computing and my night of passion with Christine Aguilera.
Re:Spam is bad...mmmkay? (Score:2)
It's sorted into the likelyhood of it happening, mon frere, rather than in my desire of it happening. That's a completely separate list that I would produce, but it was subpoenaed by the courts over some 'injunction' or another.
Kylie has absolutely no sense of humour, despite her elfin perfection.
sorry, a gut feeling is good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
All you can do is look at the spam industry itself, and ask, "why wouldn't they harvest opt-outs for future spamming?" By opting out, after all, you've just given proof that the email address in question is valuable to you. Why wouldn't they want to take advantage of that piece of information. Do you think spammers suddenly adopt scruples on this point? Given how unscrupulous spammers are in every other aspect of what they do, I think it's absurd to think they treat opt-out lists with any integrity.
That opt-out lists will be abused by spammers is common-sense. I think the burden of proof is on you to show otherwise.
Re:sorry, a gut feeling is good enough (Score:2)
I can imagine worse.
And you'll agree that the sleaziest spammers forge headers.
Yes, but so do the moderately sleazy.
The scale of spam is now at such a level that I doubt that the spammers are targeting their lists at all. They will add opt-out lists to spidered lists, usenet lists, invented lists, previous response lists, virus/worm created lists and all the others without giving any one list prior
Re:sorry, a gut feeling is good enough (Score:2)
Re:sorry, a gut feeling is good enough (Score:2)
> You've asked for statistics, but this is a case where none are really needed. Logic is good enough.
Because "logic" supports your position.
>What you've asked for can't be all that easily studied
It's trivially easy to study. The only question is how much time do you want to spend on it.
>Harvesting email addresses from opt-out lists has to be about the sleaziest thing a spammer could do.
I doubt that they do things just to be sleazy. What's the benefit to them in doing it? Or, given
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2, Insightful)
It may well be an "anecdote," but it's an anecdote straight from the pigs mouth.
KFG
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
> How about the story the other day where they actually interviewed a spammer who said he "loved" unsubscribe emails?
That would be an anecdote.
>It may well be an "anecdote,"
It's an actual anecdote. There's no need to "quote" it.
>but it's an anecdote straight from the pigs mouth.
Spammers are lying vermin... except when they're telling us what we want to hear, apparently.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
> No, it's not an anecdote, which is why I put it in quotes
Yes, it is an anecdote, which is why I didn't. Gosh, this is fun.
>It is testimony.
In what sense?
Are you familiar
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Anecdote: A short account of an interesting or humorous incident.
As in anecdotal: Based on casual observations or indications rather than rigorous or scientific analysis.
As in, it's an anecdote when I say that I fucked your momma in the ass last night. It becomes testimony when I swear to it in court, and it becomes credible when I produce the pictures of her broken, bleeding, sobbing body.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Either yes...it does put you on a new list, or no, it doesn't. What does either answer help, or provide to this discussion, besides your own little semantic tantrum about pointing out Allman's statement to be untrue.
The point is so minor that it warrants no more than about 2 seconds thought.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Wow, thanks for the unverifiable anecdote!
Spammers who do what? What exactly is it that they do with the verified addresses? They sell them to other spammers? Are you really saying that spammers trust each other enough to pay more for "verified" addresses? Can you support this with some evidence?
Perhaps they send more spam to those addresses. How? How can they send more spam? The costs are effectively free, spam is by its nature untargetted, and we've all seen (ooh, an anecdote) multiple spams fr
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
If you want scientfic research, do it on your own time - why the hell should I spend time and money just to satisfy you? Of course it's an unverifiable anecdote. I could falsify any evidence I create, too. Do your own fucking research if you want to be convinced. Anyway, as other responders have said, it's something very di
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:3)
> They harvest verified email addresses and track them seperatly (and in addition to) ones they harvest from un-verifed sources like lists they buy from other spammers, the web, or usenet.
Look, I'm going to type this very, very slowly to make it easy for you.
And. Then. They. Do. What. With. Them?
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter, anyway - whats important is what they do NOT do with them, which is remove them.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
>I'd give them priority in my runs, for example, so email to those addresses was more likely to get out if some of my runs were cut off.
Thank you. Now, was that so very hard? That's the first and only actual answer that I've received to the original question.
How often do spammers get their connections cut? What proportion of their spam gets lost that way? Do they start over with their new connection, or pick up spamming at the point where they left off? I know that you don't know any of this t
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:3)
Do it yourself. Find a few unsubscribe links in some of the dodgier spams that include the email address they were sent to in them. Replace that address with a new non-guessable (and disposable!) email address and "unsubscribe", if you suddenly get spam on that account, then you've just disproved your call of "bullshit". Can't argue with evidence you've gathered you
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:3, Informative)
If you remember this article [nytimes.com] from the nytimes posted [slashdot.org] a while back. This guy really seemed to appreciate out of office reply. An anecdote? Yes, but from a self-proclaimed spammer.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Fine. Here, have some candy and stop annoying the adults.
The problem is that spreading this kind of FUD is fine because it keep everyone from punting their email address around with gay abandon. All of a sudden the average joe user thinks, 'Hey, my email address has value to someone.'
The more important thing to ask is if anyone honours the unsubscribe links. I know that all of the lists I've written (double opt in, etc) and the lists I'm subscribed to do, but
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
i've used this method since 1998 or so, and it works really well! since that time, my 'private' email address was spam free, but then just this year, a family member decided to send me an online birthday card.
that was it, this one single submission to a free birthday card now nets me bet
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Look, chump, read what you're replying to. I'm not interested in your unrelated anecdotes. I too have an account that receives no spam, but what relevance does this have?
If you've got nothing to say on the subject at hand, why not just keep your opinions to yourself, or better yet, start your own thread.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
What is your point here ? Or just to get a lot of people wrapped up in an argument that has nothing to do with stopping spam at all, only to see yourself win an argument ?
I'm gonna guess it's the latter.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:5, Informative)
OK: here's a year-old ComputerWorld article documenting a study that did exactly that. Its title? Unsubscribing from spam counterproductive [idg.net.nz].
The best anecdote/example/statistic?So this study found that unsubscribing made spam volumes more than double.
Feeling better now?
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
What part of "anecdote" are you unclear about?
This article quotes no figures, supplies no details. It's unverifiable, and it's provided by a .com with an interest in producing content. Its credibility is precisely and only that which you choose to invest in it.
On the other hand, it confirms your preconceptions, so it must be true!
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
The same could be said of almost every newspaper article, all news heard from the radio, and most news seen TV!
Well, usually on TV and sometimes in newspapers there will be a figure... but it's pretty easy to imagine a bar chart showing a bar twice as high for the unsubscribed account.
The article does supply a number of details, including where he created the two test accounts, roughly what he
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Ten trillion is more than twice a hundred, and is also statistically significant. Three is more than twice one, and is not. Neither of them are verifiable, nor are they remotely credible without at a minimum full email logs, or corroboration from an independent organisation not paid by the word.
What parts of "figures", "statistics", "details" and "verifiable" did you fail to comprehend?
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Coward, it's unverifiable because it contains no figures, no details, no logs, no evidence of any sort.
If an unsupported assertion by an interested commercial party that gets paid by the word is all the evidence that there is, then I'm going to consider that there is no actual evidence at all.
I don't have to do my own experiments. There's no grounds for considering them necessary.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
And carry on attempting to 'unsubscribe' from spammers' lists? Good luck! And please let us know how well that works for you.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2, Informative)
All you have to do is follow one of the unsubscribe links, one of the ones that go to a page you tye in your email address, not the ones that encode it. And then type an email address, one that gets no spam.
As I have access to mail server logs, I typed in a non-existence address, a random string of letters.
The address gets about 30 rejects a day.
This not only shows spammers not only ignore unsubscribe requests, but they complete
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Thanks for the anecdote. Now, how exactly does that relate to my question, which is how unsubscribing from an address that's already on a spam list can possible make it worse?
Do you have an answer to that question, or would you like to fire up another anecdote about a different question?
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
You're requiring non-anecdotal evidence on a discussion board ? For what reason ?
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
There are evil spammers out there. What I'm questioning is their practical ability to become more evil simply because you're verified an address.
>There's no way any study can be "verifiable". You verify studies by repeating them
Which is it to be?
It would be a lot more credible (as an anecdote) if it provided the raw data, including email logs.
On the other hand, you're an Anonymous Coward, so are probably not the sort of bottom feeding pond scum that would be interested in anything as useless as
SQL injection (Score:2)
So, using an unsubscribe link could work with those. Not sure however, whether typing ' or ''=' into the unsubscribe box would work: even the dumbest spammers have backups, unfortunately.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
I'm calling bullshit on you. I challenge you to cite quantative evidence that replying to spam DOES NOT result in receiveing extra spam.
No, anecdotes don't cut it. Neither does common sense, or "well, it stands to reason" arguments.
If you're gonna make that kind of challenge, then it's reasonable to assume that you have that kin
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
>I'm calling bullshit on you. I challenge you to cite quantative evidence that replying to spam DOES NOT result in receiveing extra spam.
No, your pants are on fire.
I have no position, I made no claims. Don't for one second assume that you can simply turn the argument around and disprove something that I didn't say.
I'll take it from your passive-aggressive stance that you don't have the evidence that I asked for, shall I?
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Yes, you most certainly did.
You "called bullshit" on an assertion - saying that it was wrong. Your claim was that the statement was false.
You then demanded evidence, while providing none to support your own stance (your own stance was that the claim is false.)
If you had not made any stance, you would have stated "I don't believe this, but it's possible, can anyone provide proof," instead of stating "this is bullshit."
I'll take it from your passive-aggressive stan
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:3, Insightful)
I began receiving spam to myname1964 at mydomain about 6 months ago.
There's some proof that yes, replying is bad.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2, Insightful)
vi your mail file and take a look at some of the 'opt-out' links. Many, many times, they're dead, non-functioning links, that are a) not remotely related to any other link within the email or b) malformed so as to return an error. I look at my mail file this way every day and run into this pretty consistently.
Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part: (Score:2)
Re:Spam is advertising! (Score:3, Interesting)
In case you didn't bother reading the article, it mentioned that the volume of spam was doubling every 10 weeks. This is nothing short of a threat to the viability of email itself. Would you even bother opening your inbox, if you knew that you would have to delete several thousand irrelevant, unwanted and (in many cases) fraudulent emails just to get to the 10 or 20 useful ones from friends and family? Spammers are intensely selfish - being quit
Re:Spam is advertising! (Score:2, Insightful)
Most spam emails I see in my Inbox are scams, bogus prescription drugs, and Web site affiliates violatin
Re:Sendmail is a Good Guy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you mentioned "MS Exchange developers" in the same breath as Wietse Venema and Dan Berstein, and finished off by calling Allman a "suit".
You must be a troll, then! Or profoundly, phenomenally ignorant.
Re:Sendmail is a Good Guy? (Score:2)
Re:Sendmail is a Good Guy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Root access always was a hack, but it is a quick and easy way to get around file permissions. Back before pop/imap when everyone read directly from $MAIL, you needed a way to restrict mail to the user and the sendmail program. Who bothered with complicated groups just for that?
I agree that these justifications have gone the way of the dodo, but anyone who's been around understands where they came from.
I'm not trying to defend how sendmail works today, just to explain why those features are present. Personally, I prefer the old "trust everyone" model for mail than the insanity that we have today, but that isn't realistic. DJB's paranoia is useful thing in these modern times.
- doug
No, not really (Score:3, Insightful)
At worst he'd be a medical or pharmacetuical company selling to the victims.
I think it is clear which side he wants to win, but his efforts are more dedicated to keeping email functioning than figh
Secure email protocols won't help. (Score:4, Interesting)
I got hit by a spammer last week who was changing his host names every couple of messages. And not just on the envelope - he was changing 'em in DNS because he had his own nameserver! He got shut down by the mid-level carrier after about 12 hours, during which my servers received thousands of messages that I had to block by IP. Today, though, I am getting the same stuff, now coming from a cracked cable-modem user.
Hundreds of the spams that hit here every day are sent from cracked systems connected to Comcast, RoadRunner, and Verizon DSL.
If you allow anyone to send mail, regardless of how that mail is encrypted or secured, the spammers will find a way to illegally take advantage of that legitimate mailserver and send their trash.
This is because they are criminals. Not "legitimate businessmen" and not "entrepreneurs exercising their freedom of speech". Criminals who purchase accounts with stolen credit card numbers and move on as soon as an ISP shuts them down.
Email Marketing Works, Spam Doesn't (Score:3, Interesting)
I get frust