On Sunday 28 September 2003 08:51 pm, Kaj Haulrich wrote: > On Sunday 28 September 2003 10:24 pm, Bryan Phinney wrote: > > <snip> > > > That function would have been useful about 2 or 3 years ago, > > it no longer is. > > </snip> > > Thank you Bryan, for a very comprehensive and informative > response. We learn something new every day, don't we ? > > Which leads me to yet another question : given all the technical > possibilities nowadays, why can't we track those spammers down > to where they typed their crap - and then whack them ?
Actually, it is just not really that easy. The original architecture of the Internet was designed to be elastic and resistant to overt attacks. Part of this design was to create open standards and infrastructure so that if one part of the net was down, traffic would be routed around it and connectivity would continue. This is currently working to spammer's advantage by allowing them to avoid getting smacked at any one connection point and not being able to regain connectivity. It is hard to shut down anonymous connectivity completely without hurting some legitimate needs to be anonymous. Email is not supposed to be a reliable or secure medium. Personally, I would like to see legislation that attacks the true source of spam. Any company found to be advertising by spam would be hit with a very sizeable monetary fine. There will still be criminals who engage in that behavior but once the source of funds start to dry up, that would be the end of spam. Companies that run loose affiliate programs that seemingly wink at spamming as long as it works, would have to pay big time for doing so and would stop. Mainstream companies would run from email promotion for fear of having to pay fines. Professional spammers would be unable to give their services away and would slink back to their trailer parks and other scams. Organizations like the DMA and even mainstream companies like MS would fight such efforts however, the end goal is to convince people that spam is acceptable, like junk mail, so that they can use the channel for cheap advertising. The idea of a world where customers actually pay to receive advertising is just too good for some of them to give it up without a fight. Like the tragedy of the commons, email is fated to ruin. I actually think that it has already gone too far myself. Spammers have managed to get 3 anti-spam blacklists shut down by DDoS attacks using recently compromised servers and the SoBig virus that they sent out and created. Soon, with the increase in spam, regular people will just give up email and block everything except traffic that is explicitly whitelisted by them to get rid of the spam. That will be the effective end of email for anything except communications that have been cleared in advance using phone or snail mail. And, I don't have to mention, the end of spam. If the DMA or any other marketing group was hoping to use email for advertising, they have already missed the boat. They should have lobbied for effective legislation from the beginning and tried to salvage the medium. Their greed will cost them in that respect. -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer
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