This posting made from the web-site. Please reply via email in addition to the group. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------ Apparently there are now several Bills and amendments to Bill in front of the Congress and Senate, supposedly there to help protect internet servers and the public from the ever-increasing flood of Spam that is clogging servers and our email inboxes, and adding to our cost of internet services worldwide. Unfortunately, as usual the people with money (e.g., spammers) are reaching the congressmen and senators and corrupting the process. Like most other laws, they are being advertised as helping to protect the public, when in actuality they are disguised tools that simply make it even easier or cheaper for spammers and reduce our ability to limit the flow or take legal action against them. I heard on "major media" that one of the reasons Washington stepped in, was because many states were making their own laws -- some of them effective enough to give us citizens some genuine ways to limit or stop unwanted email. For example, apparently more than one state simply required all spammers to put into the title of all of their unsolicited email transmissions, the abbreviation for advertisement. The very first word of the title would simply be "Adv. ", where the abbreviation is followed by a period and a space. With this, any computer user who wanted to stop email could do so reliably by going to the "filter" function of their email program, and having the filter automatically delete or reject anything that started with "Adv. ". This eliminates the need to program our email filters with dozens or hundreds of complicated rules in only semi-effective attempts to define the many thousands of ways a spammer could word his titles or messages. These complicated filter! s also slow down the computer's processing of email, and sometimes eliminates desired email from friends or friendly businesses. Of course the federal courts immediately saw that this was giving too much power to the states, and too much privacy rights or protections to the citizens, so quickly ruled it "unconstitutional", adding that only the federal government could legislate on such things. Naturally, Washington is now busy giving the appearance of helping the voting public, but in actuality are doing nothing about the problem. In fact they are even making things easier and more profitable for spammers. For example, as I understand it from the "major media", Washinton intends (or have already), passed law creating two "new" requirements. One, spammers would be required to show somewhere in their title or email the nature of their intent. Two, they would be required to insert an email address or other method to allow the receiver to request they be taken off the spammer's mailing list. Even the media is pretending that this is effective legislation in the interests of the people. But of course these so-called protections provide no changes whatsoever -- it is simply business as usual. Everyone who has received more than a half dozen pieces of junk email knows that they always clearly show they are junk mail, but in so many ways that it is impossible to have a computer effectively identify them as such and safely reject or destroy them. As for the ability to "opt out", the victim that trustingly asks to opt out simply verifies to the spammers that they found their mark, that the victim's email address is valid, and that the spammer can confidently sell the victims name and address to a few thousand MORE spammers! By "opting out", the victim simply puts himself on the lists for even more spam. Anyone wise enough to write news bits or enter bills into congress, is smart enough to know this. Every website or article that discusses spam points out these! exact two problems. So the spin from media and law-makers simply proves that they do not have the public's interest at heart. Like requiring gun locks so people cannot get to their weapons quickly enough to defend themselves or their family against intruders into their homes, Washington wants to make sure that the laws also deny citizens the right or ability to defend themselves from intruders breaking into their email boxes to pitch their "Get Rich Quick" schemes and porno. It is always the crooks and slime first, and the honest citizen second. But public pressure, if great enough, can sometimes overcome the influences of money and power in Washington. Somehow we need to get much more people to call and write their representatives and the writers or supporters of bills. But how? Maybe we need to write up something and "spam" everyone in the U.S. with the message! :-) _______________________________________________ SpamCop-Help mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://news.spamcop.net/mailman/listinfo/spamcop-help
[SC-Help] A few points not adequately being addressed by spam-fighters
anonymous poster at 208.21.236.180 Sat, 21 Apr 2001 09:41:55 -0700
