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On Thursday 08 April 2004 11:55 pm, Paul M Foster wrote:
> I'm interested in coming up with a hello-okay method of fighting spam.
Actually AOL I think is now blocking the websites that are promoted in spam.
This is an effective solution, except it's too effective. That's "Big
Brother" making decisions for us. Treat someone like a child and sooner or
later they will act like one.
On the other side, in times of war different rules apply. Question is are we
at that junction and will we get the freedom back once the war is won?
Usually governments have an outright lousy history of never returning
anything.
Besides all those minor points, I love anything that lowers profitability
for spammers. What could also be effective is that we publish pictures in
postoffices and in news media of known big spammers. Make their often
wealthy lifestyles a bit more cramped with lawful actions.
The things is, we as a Internet users deserve the spam because, as a group
we happily make it worthwhile. Percentage wise, only a very small group
actually DO anything about it. Those who have done things have had great
success in getting spammers to complain of unfair treatment.
I'd make monthly donations to a group that could get a grassroot movement
against use of spam and blocking of spam promoted sites. Of course, due
diligence must be made to ensure the spammer is not promoting non spammed
sites to make the whole thing break down.
Maybe a massive spam awareness campaign where people are heavily hit with
the fact that everytime they follow one of those links they support spam.
Give them tools to search for products by visiting websites that has the
kinds of offers they like. Make mailing lists for people who want to be
informed about specials. I.e. an alternative way for people who responds to
spam to get their "valuable" injection of "Specials".
You want it - subscribe to it. Make desireable enough to attract people.
I believe in that in the end it's going to be hell to implement a technical
solution that will be implemented by enough people/servers, or not used
against us by the spammer.
Education is the only way, I think, this war can be won.
Now maybe we can use spam to stop spam. If we spam education about spam with
an alternative solution and then have special offers lists for people to
subscribe to, maybe that could have a decent degree of workability. Get
spammers to host these lists, after all it's in their best interest.
I would not mind getting spammed with something that educated and offered a
solution to continued spam. I get so much spam anyway it would make no
difference. I'm sure I could get one spammer to do this.
Now their challenge could be to have the type of lists that would make it
just right for people. I.e. the kinds of things they are interested in, at
a particular rate of injected random offers and so on. Something that would
be highly tunable by the users. Hmm, I'm going to setup a page with all the
details and see how people respond to it.
OK, an inital concept is up at http://szmidt.org/spam.php
- --
Steve
"They that would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
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