more on Start-Up Aims to End Spam

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 10:42:21 -0500
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Start-Up Aims to End Spam

On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 10:14:07AM -0500, Dave Farber wrote:
> I am at a loss to see how this is different from others like it. Djf

It's not.  And it's important to note that it does NOTHING to "end spam";
the aount of spam sent by spammers and the load it imposes on mail servers
is completely unaffected by this.  (Spammers don't care about bounces:
they send by the millions, using either dedicated servers or hijacked
relays/proxies, so there's no reason for them to care.  They also don't
care about which mail servers they send to or even correctly using
the SMTP protocol: their only goal is to maximize the message count.)

It's also worth noting that -- unless I misunderstand how this system
works, which is certainly possible -- that it would be impossible
for blind users, difficult for people who can't understand the [English]
instructions, requires web access to deliver mail (VERY bad idea),
and may impose a single point-of-failure on a mail system which has
been deliberately built to function in a distributed manner.  (I can
also think of one or two simple ways to effectively disable this service,
but I'm not going to share those.  However, if I can think of them, so
can spammers.)

Internet users who are actually interested in *stopping* spam rather
than merely wallpapering over it are best served by participating in
boycotts of spam-supporting ISPs, thus isolating them from the portion
of the Internet which doesn't tolerate spam and depriving them of
their ill-gotten gains from providing services to spammers.  Excellent
(and copious) information on these can be found at any of these:

    http://www.spamhaus.org/
    http://www.spews.org/
    http://www.spamfaq.net/
    http://spam.abuse.net/

among many other places, all of which can be found by traversing
links on those sites.  It's become very clear in the last 1-2 years
that significant economic pressure applied to pro-spam/pro-abuse ISPs
can, in some cases, cause them to behave more responsibly and to
cooperate with the Internet community in removing spam and spammers.
It's often a painfully slow process, but it does have the merit of
attacking the problem at its source -- and thus it's the only process
that's likely to work.

---Rsk


------ End of Forwarded Message

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