RE: Junk mail and rotting web (SPAM)

James D. Wilson (netsurf@sersol.com)
Mon, 1 Feb 1999 05:34:47 -1000

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What to do?

  1. Join us on spam-l
  2. Lobby your state senators/representatives for strong anti-spam legislation in your state which includes prison time for knowingly/intentionally transferring the cost of advertisement from the sender to intermediate networks and the end users. Class C felony would do the trick.
  3. Follow up on and complain to the upstream providers of every spam you receive. Do not "just press delete."
  4. Pressure your ISP to use the MAPS Realtime Blackhole List as well as ORBS, DSSL, ORCA anti-spam listings on their mail server.

For a start...

"non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem"

William of Ockham (1285-1347/49)

Seems to me that by now the Spammers have reached our shore .... I had three mails offering various "services" in my inbox this morning. Two came from this listserver. Perhaps the access to post in this group should be restricted to registered members of the mailing list. Should be possible.

Some years ago, when commercialization hit the net, I hoped that this would pass just like bad weather. Seems I was wrong. Each time I think that ba now it's enough, some freaks discover a new way of making the net more annoying. As I seldom use search engines, I did not recognize by now that they are SPAMmed too. The newsgroups, though, have to be considered obsolete.

What to do? I recently read that the US government, pushed by the lobby of SPAMmers, wants to legalize SPAM. SPAM is illegal today, but things seem to change. Let's hope that this won't happen.

Perhaps it would help if anonymous accounts would be banned from newsgroup posting. Perhaps it would help it mail services like gmx or bigfoot would not allow mass mailings AKA SPAM. I recently tested gmx and found out that it is no problem to make some easy mass mailings from their system.

The actual plan of the European parliament shows us some more drastic way to stop the SPAM flood from the US: If the US servers allow SPAM to be sent over the net, the transatlantic connection can be cut! This would cut the European net from the rest of the world, but it would also stop most of the SPAM!

The most efficient way to avoid this junk would be the capitalistic one: Allow mass mailings, but let the dumb ass who wants to send them pay all the costs to post and transmit them. That would definitely help!

kbaender@bigfoot.com
http://home.ivm.de/~Kasimodo/

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