why can't we have a Federal Do Not E-mail list?  A poster's comment in a recent rant thread about Myspace got me thinking.

It would kill all junk e-mail, and put the spam business to somewhat of an end.

If I could work my way it would also apply to sites that have internal mail systems set up,(i,e, ARFCOM mail. Myspace, Facebook, etc.)

So since for the most part the Do Not Call list has worked, why can't the .gov set up a blacklist for spammers/junk e-mail?

harder to track?

Quoted: harder to track?

You bring up a good point.  

The Internet protocols when written never imagined anything like spam.  Besides a do-not-mail list is like gun laws to a criminal.  Doesn't mean shit since they have no intention of following the law.

The only REAL solution at this point is for ISP's to cut off zombied machines from the network.

Sally Soccer-mommy and Joe Sixpack and their totally unpatched, anally raped, and infected Windows box is responsible for a metric assload of this crap.  Not all, to be sure, but a LOT.

Cut them off and keep them cut off until they realize that a general purpose computer is NOT a toaster.

Quoted: The Internet protocols when written never imagined anything like spam.  Besides a do-not-mail list is like gun laws to a criminal.  Doesn't mean shit since they have no intention of following the law. The only REAL solution at this point is for ISP's to cut off zombied machines from the network. Sally Soccer-mommy and Joe Sixpack and their totally unpatched, anally raped, and infected Windows box is responsible for a metric assload of this crap.  Not all, to be sure, but a LOT. Cut them off and keep them cut off until they realize that a general purpose computer is NOT a toaster.

I never thought of it that way before.
Looks like this isn't that great of an idea.

I dont get spam.

Quoted: I dont get spam.

Oddly enough,  I get occasional spam despite having Firefox, Avast, Ad-Aware and having my Yahoo e-mail settings set up to catch spam.
Nothing's perfect I guess.

firefox avast and all that does absolutely nothing to control the amount of spam you get.

spam comes from outside sources. there are programs that scour every webpage looking at anything with an @ and a . in it. it automatically assumes that's an email address and adds it to a list.

there are also companies that sell your email address to people that make lists for spammers.


i can check my email on linux and get the same exact spam messages that will still be in my inbox if i check it on windows.


that's why i use gmail. i do not get spam on gmail. at least, none that make it to my inbox. it catches it all.

Your post advocates a
( ) technical (*) legislative ( ) 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
(*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(*) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) 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
(*) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(*) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems
( ) 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
(*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(*) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(*) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(*) 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
( ) 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
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(*) 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:

(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

-Foxxz

A no-spam list would be totally unenforcible.

Nothing like inviting the feds into regulating more cyber activity... one more brick in the road to taxation, "decency standards", and other nonsense.

Quoted: Nothing like inviting the feds into regulating more cyber activity... one more brick in the road to taxation, "decency standards", and other nonsense.

I suppose you feel the same way about cracking down on child porn?

Quoted: why can't we have a Federal Do Not E-mail list?  A poster's comment in a recent rant thread about Myspace got me thinking. It would kill all junk e-mail, and put the spam business to somewhat of an end. If I could work my way it would also apply to sites that have internal mail systems set up,(i,e, ARFCOM mail. Myspace, Facebook, etc.) So since for the most part the Do Not Call list has worked, why can't the .gov set up a blacklist for spammers/junk e-mail?

It's gotten a little bit better for me, but it's still annoying as hell.  The non-US accounts are uncontrollable and we're screwed that way.

Sure would be nice, Deej....

HH

Quoted: Quoted: It's gotten a little bit better for me, but it's still annoying as hell.  The non-US accounts are uncontrollable and we're screwed that way. Sure would be nice, Deej.... HH

It would be nice but it seems like wishful thinking.

Quoted: Quoted: Nothing like inviting the feds into regulating more cyber activity... one more brick in the road to taxation, "decency standards", and other nonsense. I suppose you feel the same way about cracking down on child porn?

PLEASE think of the children! The liberal battlecry. Yes, its bad, but allowing the feds into your house every day to search for it is not the answer. And this is precisely what they are trying to legislate right now. Complete logging on all your internet activity for years. Paid for by your ISP and you of course. This is a nearly impossible task. I've been running my own experiments into doing exactly this. The results are not pretty.

-Foxxz

Quoted: that's why i use gmail. i do not get spam on gmail. at least, none that make it to my inbox. it catches it all.

I get between 25 and 35 in my gmail spambox every day.  Only get maybe 1 every month that slips through and ends up in the inbox.

Have never had a false positive that I can recall.

I can remember the ugly days of using Outlook and that was before spam REALLY got bad.

Between the rapid rise in video, P2P and spam something is going to go "crash" down the road if we don't get a handle on it.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Nothing like inviting the feds into regulating more cyber activity... one more brick in the road to taxation, "decency standards", and other nonsense. I suppose you feel the same way about cracking down on child porn? PLEASE think of the children! The liberal battlecry. Yes, its bad, but allowing the feds into your house every day to search for it is not the answer. And this is precisely what they are trying to legislate right now. Complete logging on all your internet activity for years. Paid for by your ISP and you of course. This is a nearly impossible task. I've been running my own experiments into doing exactly this. The results are not pretty. -Foxxz

I had thought that pulpsmack had thought that child porn wasn't worth cracking down on.

Quoted: I had thought that pulpsmack had thought that child porn wasn't worth cracking down on.

Sorry if I misunderstood, but the data on the internet is too complex to attempt regulation. I have helped track down this junk, but sometimes getting enough proof to even start an investigation is impossible.

-Foxxz

Quoted: Quoted: I had thought that pulpsmack had thought that child porn wasn't worth cracking down on. Sorry if I misunderstood, but the data on the internet is too complex to attempt regulation. I have helped track down this junk, but sometimes getting enough proof to even start an investigation is impossible. -Foxxz

I agree.  The internets are jsut way too big.

Quoted: firefox avast and all that does absolutely nothing to control the amount of spam you get. spam comes from outside sources. there are programs that scour every webpage looking at anything with an @ and a . in it. it automatically assumes that's an email address and adds it to a list. there are also companies that sell your email address to people that make lists for spammers. i can check my email on linux and get the same exact spam messages that will still be in my inbox if i check it on windows. that's why i use gmail. i do not get spam on gmail. at least, none that make it to my inbox. it catches it all.

After setting up my spam filter in gmail by selecting spam mail, I rarely ever get any. However, I do have 3k emails sitting in my spam folder

I keep on getting an email informing me that I had a distant relative that died in a plane crash in Africa and I stand to inherit several million or billion dollars(I got kind of lost with all the zeros). I know it's fake for 2 reasons:
1.The story's completely farfetched!
2.The email always comes from a different sender,despite having marked it as spam on Yahoo Mail.

Most of the time if I'm registering for a site or giving my email just to continue to something I need on the internet,I'll give an obviously fake email address such as [email protected].

Quoted: ~snip~ Between the rapid rise in video, P2P and spam something is going to go "crash" down the road if we don't get a handle on it.

Listening to a Leo Laporte podcast and they mentioned that over 95% of their email is spam.  I have a friends that do IT for some big hitters and they think death is too kind for spammers.   People are buying that crap therefore spam works.  If they didn't get sales it would collapse. Thank all the stupid people for spam.