Spam bill authors: Misguided criticisms

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Focus is wrong: Dry up the cash flow, instead

Spam works because it's cheap. By the last estimate that I read, a large-volume spamhaus breaks even if one user in 40,000 takes the bait. And it works because the spammers are out of reach, offshore or underground. They're effectively untouchable, and they've got margin to burn on evasion tactics.

But ultimately, spam works because people pay to have it sent.

So tactics like those commonly discussed for anti-spam legislation, while they seem sensible, amount to spraying water on the fire rather than eliminating the fuel load. What's needful is to remove the cash flow that fuels the spam engine.

It's true that a large percentage of spam is comprised of trojan carriers of some sort (be they software or social-engineering). But most of those exist to support the infrastructure of spamming; take away the fuel load -- the cash flow -- and most of those should dry up, too.

To spell it out: If [hypothetically] Ron Popeil pays Spamhaus Ltd. $5K to advertise his products, that's going to create a money trail to verify the spams that have his company's name on them. Ronco then gets hammered with a hefty criminal fine for funding the illegal distribution of Spam.

This all seems very, very obvious to me. So why isn't it even being discussed?

Posted by: escoles@...   Posted on: 01/05/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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