Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 04:03:03 +1000 From: David Nugent <davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> To: "Michael K. Sanders" <msanders@aros.net> Cc: Eivind Eklund <perhaps@yes.no>, jgrosch@sirius.com, jbryant@tfs.net, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ESCAPE! Florida Cruise/Vacation $598/4 People Message-ID: <199705091803.EAA04604@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 09 May 1997 11:26:55 CST." <199705091726.LAA21335@shell.aros.net>
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> >Make it unprofitable to give IP feeds to spammers. That is a much > >more powerful hold - if a provider knows that they will get blocked > >from a lot of routers for _all_ their traffic, and thus quite a bit of > >their market value, they'll think about the cost/profit ratio. > > ...and thereby make in unprofitable for the spammers, as well. > It's no good for them if everything they send out just gets > dropped in the bit bucket. The truth be known, the typical "spammer" wouldn't have a clue. They've just found out about this 'great idea' of selling in the internet, signed up for an account, paid their money (surprise!) and sent out lots of spam using whatever facility the provider offers, usually an exploder plus a large list of target addresses, 50% of which are obsolete, out of date, unreachable or otherwise blocked. The internet awareness of the 'spammer' - almost 0%. They've been had. They don't even get to see any of the bounces, since this is one of the "features" they've signed up for! They don't care, and nor do the providers. They've sold their 10,000 email addresses, even if they're not real. Sure, there are exceptions to this, but that's generally the case. The fact that they're doing it in the first place is strong indication of just how blissfully ignorant they are of the internet and certainly of its nettiquette. I'm not at all defending their actions here, only pointing out that the only winners in real terms here are the providers who are taking the cash of the ignorant. They usually don't care if mail is or is not delivered. Why should they? THEIR business doesn't depend on it directly. The problem is, while there are suckers out there willing to believe their sales dribble, spam will continue to be a problem. The best we can hope for is that the public will slowly become more educated, and these schemers will drop into the obscurity from which they emerged. And I'm certainly NOT suggesting that nothing be done about it. Do whatever you're doing now - drop spam, complain, mis-route packets - whatever is necessary to ensure that the *customers* will eventually realise just what a sham it is. With any luck, they'll start taking legal action over the provision of a defective service and start putting spam-providers out of business. Regards, David David Nugent - Unique Computing Pty Ltd - Melbourne, Australia Voice +61-3-9791-9547 Data/BBS +61-3-9792-3507 3:632/348@fidonet davidn@freebsd.org davidn@blaze.net.au http://www.blaze.net.au/~davidn/
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