Another War We're Not Winning: Us vs Spam

Winning means eliminating spam, not just building bigger better filters.

I'm pretty sure the only way to eliminate spam is to eliminate electricity. Isn't something like 90%+ of all email traffic spam? (I read the stat recently but can't remember the exact figure)

I am still surprised that sending spam is actually a viable "business". Are there so many people responding to spam?

What really pisses me off is this:

Quoting:every potential smtp improvement or replacement that could do anything to actually stop spam, has been systematically patented. the crap that's left isn't going to do any good. we're headed for walled gardens.

Sounds like another job for pubpat. I imagine most if not all of these improvements to fail the obviousness test.

SPAM is the electronic equivalent of the unwanted ads I get in my dead-tree mailbox every Wednesday.

There's enough stuff there to take a whole tree to produce. I throw it out. I do not read it. It is Unsolicited Commercial Mail: SPAM. I note I am not the only one who moves UCM straight from mailbox to trash.

I have used The Law to stop the dead-tree SPAM. Federal Law makes it clear that your mailbox is private, and no-one can enter it without permission.

I filled out all the proper forms at the Post Office to make it stop. It stopped for one week. Then it started again.

My point is that there are behavioral and attitudinal barriers to eliminating SPAM. I'm afraid that the Modern Computer User (who, remember, evolved from the Pleistocene* AOL user) expects it.

Yes, I agree the goal should be the elimination of SPAM. But I also think that a Moon base and a Mars base are realistic goals.

Does anybody know when the Modern Computer User is scheduled to develop frontal lobes?

* http://www.m-w.com/mw/table/geologic.htm

> My point is that there are behavioral and attitudinal barriers to eliminating SPAM. I'm afraid that the Modern Computer User (who, remember, evolved from the Pleistocene* AOL user) expects it.

Ditto for in-game advertising. People didn't resist it, and now we're paying $50 for spam.

> the Modern Computer User is scheduled to develop frontal lobes?

Well, Perhaps in a few thousand years. The average computer 'owner' is pretty sad. Add to that the mandatory consumer training that most succumb to, and you have an ideal spam patsy.

Quoting: I filled out all the proper forms at the Post Office to make it stop. It stopped for one week. Then it started again.

That's one problem the Dutch have mostly solved. Here in Holland you can buy a government issue sticker (about $5) and put that on your mailbox. Then the UCM stops. If you get UCM you can call a hotline and the distributor gets a warning. After a couple of warnings they get BIG fines so they're quite keen on paying attention to the stickers.

We have two types of stickers. One says that you don't want the commercial folders but do want the other stuff that's distributed house-by-house (e.g. free local papers, etcetera). The other sticker says you don't want anything that doesn't have your address on it.

There are only two problems:

1) It's all or nothing. I can't say that I would like the UCM from my local PC shops and supermarket and not the rest.

2) It does nothing against UCM that bears your address. Fortunately in The Netherlands the vast bulk of UCM is distributed house-by-house with no address on it.

>That's one problem the Dutch have mostly solved.

Ah, how I miss Europe. If only I'd ever been there...