Spam: Leave it to the sender

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Sounds good... for spammers

Here's how spammers will take advantage of this new system:

Think about how spammers get their spam messages sent today. They are usually
(a) in the U.S. using an ISP who doesn't work very hard to stop its customers from sending spam,
(b) using a hijacked computer that has been left on with a high speed internet connection, or
(c) from somewhere like eastern europe where it is impossible to contact the ISP and get them to block the offending host.

Right now spamming software just blasts out messages from those three locations, and then when it is done sending (or if it gets disconnected by the ISP) it doesn't do anything else.

The spammers simply need to modify their software to send out these "notifications" instead of the full message, and then keep running and waiting for people to retrieve a message. As long as that host stays at the same IP address and doesn't get disconnected by their ISP, it will be just as effective as spam is today.

Most people will reject the notifications from spammers, so the load on the spam-server shouldn't be too heavy. But of course some people will choose to retrieve the message, and then the spam software can just serve up any message it chooses. There would be no significant overhead for the spam server to keep a single copy of a few spam messages on file.

This also makes research and data mining even easier for spammers, since they will know right away what subjects lines are most effective for getting people to view their messages.

Since these "notifications" will be even smaller than regular messages, spammers will send out even more of them. So instead of deleting 200 spam messages each day, you will be rejecting 600 notifications each day.

Even if every ISP is diligent in taking spam servers offline right away so they can't serve up their spam messages, the notifications have already gone out. And really, notifications will be just as annoying as spam, if not more annoying because it takes an extra 20 seconds to attempt to retrieve the message that you aren't sure is spam.

In summary, my opinion is that this idea will not work and should not be pursued.

Posted by: jim_in_phoenix   Posted on: 10/11/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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