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71 Comments
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -11/+161Well, here we are again, yet another case of the "Let's beat the Spam", when everyone else on the market has already found ways to cope with it, and simply doesn't care anymore.
Your activities advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
(X) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
(X) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you and/or your company:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
(X) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down! - S0m3dud3, on 10/11/2007, -5/+136There are much better ways to combat spam for little or no cost. This is just another money making scheme for ISPs.
- noctu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+37just call spam terrorism and then everyone will gladly pay the fee
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -6/+43Honestly, who uses their ISP e-mail box? It's either gmail hotmail yahoo or which ever domain you own.
- dpaul87, on 10/11/2007, -0/+28I heard oxygen is going to cost $.2 per breathe later in the year.
- swavalier711, on 10/11/2007, -0/+21I highly doubt spam is stoppable through their methods.
I'll just keep using gmail. - EarlOfLade, on 10/11/2007, -1/+21@Chiliap2:
Yes, it is voluntary at first, fast forward a year or 2 and it becomes part of all contracts with the ISP and hence mandatory.
This is just another way to make a lot of extra money and it will become mandatory.
A better word for this is extortion! - swoopdog, on 10/11/2007, -3/+23is gmail still in beta?
but seriously
who uses their ISPs email service anyways? Hell I dont even know how to log into the damn thing. - blackbelt88, on 10/11/2007, -0/+17Only if you live in Detroit.
- diggduggjoe, on 10/11/2007, -2/+18I am more pissed that as a receiver of email these bozos could spam me. If, I put you on a black list, I want you blocked!!
I do not care if the Pope paid $1million to spam my ass, if he is not on my white list, screw him. Bypassing the filters of the ISP is one thing, but I bet they will bypass the filters of the users, which is BS. - Branden, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17It's awesome when people actually read the articles.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+13Does anyone else see this as a genuinely BAD idea?
Face it, SPAM won't be effectively blocked until the SMTP protocol (how's that for redudancy!) is edited to allow for proper user authentication. And that would be such a massive undertaking and so completely disruptive to every business/person out there that it probably won't happen anytime soon. - EarlOfLade, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9I think the correct addition to your sentence is "yet!"
- SPECOPS, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8@Lukesed
It will work for large companies sending bulk mail, like Cox sending me an email telling me about new services in my area. But it won't touch the spam trying to sell me fake rolexes and sexual aids. All this does is guarantee that those who pay up, won't be filtered by the spam filters. So, if the spam messages are getting through the filters already, this won't stop them what-so-ever, no matter how they implement it. - Chiliap2, on 10/11/2007, -7/+15Ever notice where it says voluntary?
"The voluntary scheme is aimed at large corporations and financial institutions" - Breeder18, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8I hate taxes and fees.... oh so very much... probably charge by the letter :(
- Fascist, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6It sucks when giant telcos have a monopoly in your area. Northern Illinois FTL.
- arunforce, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Not everyone. Just the crazy 28%-Bushies or whatever...
- cambrown99, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5"Emails certified using the system are marked with a blue ribbon to show they come from a trusted source, thus bypassing spam filters - a privilege that will cost the sender a quarter of a US cent per email."
Oh great, 'blue ribbon' spam. - EarlOfLade, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Is there any oxygen left in big D?
- Rhino2, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6The current way we do Email is FLAWED by DESIGN.
Tacking on some payment crap isn't going to "fix it". What we need is a new email protocol, that is Open, secure, provides authentication/verification and is none centralized.
Secondly I don't care how much you pay to send email. My procmail filter will eat your stupid "paid" email alive. - kahrn, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4@cdnyny (#7093954)
Good job *****. Insulting all digg users on digg is the most dumb thing you've done yet. If you hate digg users so much, go back to myspace where you belong rather than insulting digg users for no apparent reason. - mal1964, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston21.html
read here this made front page two days ago
have a nice day - sticksnstones, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I am firmly opposed to anything that opens the door to paying for emails. Sure, at first it's companies....
- diggduggjoe, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6SMTP is not the problem for it works. It moves mail very well.
The problem is more than SMTPs failure to authenticate, for even a more advanced system could be exploited by bot nets. They will spoof the user perfectly. At some point a mail client or web browser will save the authentication info so that a bot could use that interface to email as that user. That would be a successful email. What we need is fixing the receiving end, so it will become futile to continue to spam.
We need better client software to make digital signatures ubiquitous. Then filtering becomes so good that spammers will be wasting effort to continue. For example, the first rule could be accept no mail without a signature. That alone will add processing cost to every piece of junk mail.
The second rule would be than all mail that is from those on my digital signature white list is dropped off in the REAL inbox. All the rest with unknown signatures would be placed into a temp folder for review. We would have a huge change in the paradigm without having to encrypt every email.
Encryption would be the great next step, but just getting signatures would be a good start. Rule 3 could be that if it is not encrypted, just dump it. That would force spammers to spend the processing cycles to encrypt junk mail just to have the opportunity to be dumped by your white lists. At that point junk mail is far more expensive and most likely will be a failure. Plus they will need to encrypt every mail with each individuals public key. That information will need to be collected and maintained or it will be useless to spam.
The bar would be raised to a very high level.
I am sure that this would not be easy, for the users would need to trained. However, putting the receiver in complete control would a critical step in the right direction. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3@cdnyny
When I was in High School I used to kick the crap out of the jocks on a regular basis. I hired out as a bodyguard to the geeks, and that is how I got interested in all things geeky. Jocks were amusing, especially as I did an inside crescent kick to their heads. Now I work in IT, and I still get called on by the bosses to eject the occasional irate ex employee or trespasser on our company grounds. I don't usually make fun of geeks because I respect them. Most of the users here on Digg are intelligent, thoughtful, and try to make a debate civil. I think that you could learn a few things from them. - explnx, on 04/27/2009, -3/+6While I don't like charging for email, it will definitely work if implemented correctly. These spammers send millions of messages daily, they don't sell nearly enough to pay a price on each one.
- Feyr, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3and how exactly do you garanty that the spam filters (which you don't control) won't filter on the email from your customers?
- gostars, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Combating spam? BS!!! They're joining the fray.
- b0rg, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Spam is very expensive. Yes, we're quite certain that the PHD's here can put together a clustered server with bayesian whitelists updated against RBL's with dynamic rebuilding of sendmail.cf based upon the results of several honeypots collaborating together using predictive signature modeling, using spare hardware which will only push my power bill up by about $10 per month.
For the rest of us, paying a fraction of a penny per email is just fine, and it might even get that one crazy relative to STOP FORWARDING CRAPPY JOKES AND HOAXES all day long.
(really, guys, spam is f*cking expensive. every company with an email server has to spend THOUSANDS with evil companies like *spit* CA and *gag* Symantec on crappy products that fix yesterday's problems. And even if YOUR computer is perfectly spam/malware/trojan-proof, it's a safe bet that at least one person you send email to ISN'T.) - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I am curious as to what will happen when one of the blue ribbon spam free certified truly tustworthy clients of this scheme are infected with a virus and become spambots? Blue ribbon certified spam? I can see myself setting my filter to reject anything with a frigging blue ribbon now. Then the ISPs can worry about how to go about refunding the money to the guaranteed delivery clients that can't get delivered.
- WaterDragon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2FTA "Emails certified using the system are marked with a blue ribbon to show they come from a trusted source, thus bypassing spam filters - a privilege that will cost the sender a quarter of a US cent per email."
So, basically, a spammer can register as a legitimate company, and then still send a thousand e-mails for only $2.50.
The suggested system is just too easily abused...but it does offer more profit for ISPs, so it will be offered and promoted with all kinds of lies and misleading ads.
And did anyone else notice that the article claims there are five ISPs signed on, but then it only lists four?
Somebody can't even count. - Pic0, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3for $1 you can spam 400 people? not bad still
- dani8559, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3In my information policies class in college, we had to pick a case study and essentially act as the company that was implementing the disruptive technology. Somehow, my group settled on Goodmail.
We had the lowest score - by a large margin. It was quite a stretch try to "market" the idea to consumers and make it stick. I hope Goodmail will fail as well. - Osjpr, on 10/11/2007, -5/+7I say life imprisonment or death for grand spam and conspiracy to spam. That should satisfy geminitojanus' list.
- Dracos, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Spam will continue until the broken SMTP protocol is replaced. If the telcos had any real good intentions to fight spam, they'd contribute to the effort of developing a new internet RFC.
- atb12688, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1They don't mention charter. Thats awesome...
- paragonconcept, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1sweet - so once i figure out how to spoof their headers my zombies can send out emails that get tagged blue instead of **SPAM**
- ZrO-1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Oh sweet, so since the ISPs will be making so much extra income from these charges for bulk mail, that must mean that I will have to pay less for my monthly broadband access.
OK for reals...
I wonder if ISP customers who have been pwned and are now spam-bots are all the sudden going to get a $600/month bill for their broadband access.... - Jakerius, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1This is *****.
- InfamousAtheist, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@cdnyny,
Nice generalization about the entire community. You realize you're a loathsome, pathetic, and moronic part of that community, right?
I'd rather be like the diggers you described than be anything like you... let me guess, you were a jock and you majored in "Sports Studies and Coaching," or something like that. I am assuming you went to college though, which I suppose is doubtful. What's it like pushing a broom around for a living, or collecting dirty jock straps after practice? Oh, BTW: I've never eaten anything in a bathroom stall, and anyone who glorifies their high school years because they bullied nerdy kids is a grade-A loser. I bet you felt tough back then though.
You must really resent your intellectual superiors if you get your rocks off by anonymously insulting them on the internet. I'm a little surprised you're capable of turning your computer on, launching IE (no way you use FF or Opera if you use your AOL email account), and typing a complete sentence. You can't even spell "the" correctly. - simd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I agree with you. For individuals spam doesn't cost much. For a small businesses, a single order lost amongst spam could cost tens of thousands of dollars.
- saladtossser, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1just have your email forwarded to gmail, and have gmail forward it back, done!
- slapthemonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Wow, what a security system!! Rather I would say, another business scheme!!!
- diggduggjoe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1It is because the big guys have the name recognition and they know most people worry about using smaller names for important business requirements. Once they have you on a contract they just do not care anymore. Smaller firms will try harder for they must overcome the fear of the unknown.
- simd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1"So, basically, a spammer can register as a legitimate company, and then still send a thousand e-mails for only $2.50."
This would wipe out their profits completely, so in that sense it would work.
I actually think this is a good idea. What would be useful is if there was a daily allowance of, say, 100 emails, included in your account which would cover the vast majority of domestic users. For businesses, it's still a fraction of the cost of phone or postal mail (I write as a business owner who would much rather see his email delivered than lost in spam filters - at the moment email is broken for business). - rodgy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1They're gonna run out of business...
- smacksaw, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Nothing would stop someone from making a free, open-source version of this.
If, of course they knew it wasn't totally retarded to begin with.
Still...ever browsed the repositories? There's some lame ***** there.
Maybe someone would make an open-source version of this. - BurrItsCold, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0No Charter Communications. =)
- tobdubois, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0I like how they offer a 45 day free trial...
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