Spam is a mere irritant to individuals, although collectively it is a real problem; dominating bandwidth traffic. On the other hand someone out there, somewhere, is making profit from it. It is money for nothing. The irritation is not enough to overcome the apathy and someone’s enthusism for income.
Spam is the free-rider effect of the internet. Have economists anything to say about redressing this problem? Is spam, like the nigerian scam here to stay, or can a spam free future be imagined.
You’ve hit on the issue yourself: spam is a lucrative business because the fixed costs are low, and the variable costs are negligible. You only need one or two sales out of 50,000 emails to get a great ROI. And if a particular country’s laws are too spammer-unfriendly, you can always just move to a country that cares less.
IMHO spam won’t go away untill it becomes illegal and subject to fines and (effective) prosecution. Then the dynamic becomes:
-spammer sends out 50.000 e-mails
-maybe 2 dopes actually buy the product’
-all other 49.998 recepients can file a complaint with the SPAM-police by simply forwarding it; resulting in hefty finds for the advertiser (who has to be tracable in order to get clients) or the spammer himself (who is often untracable)
Spam won’t last two months then.
Wikipedia has a decent article on spam. It has a link to Bill Gates, saying that in 2 years time the technology will be there to beat spam, this in early 2004. Even mighty microsoft has its measure taken by spam. So it’s clearly a tougher problem and irritating more people than just me. No link to the wiki page, just trust me.
Interesting that the advertiser - the source of funds - could be prosecuted. That could be a way of killing it? Is the spammer himself always too elusive? Having readd the wiki article, spam is more than an irritant. There is a real public interest in its end.
Thanks, but I’ll check it out myself.
How will you effectively prosecute spammers in Eastern Europe and Central America? Those governments have much more important things to worry about.
I like the idea of fining the advertisor, but I see two legal issues with it:
How do you draw the legal line between spamming and legitimate advertising?
How do you protect against a spammer advertising for someone without their permission, thus causing the target of the advertising to get fined? You would have to prove a link between the advertisor and the spammer.
Not if Hormel has anything to do about it.
I use CloudMark. Basically, members vote on whether something is spam or isn’t. It is extremely effective and catches 99% of the spam. Perhaps if everyone started using it, spammers will learn to outwit it. But in general systems which rely on human intelligence will likely prevail.
However, if, for example, an ISP is able to detect spam before it downloads the message to its servers (saving it bandwidth)… suddenly the cost to the spammer drops as well and they’ll just be able to send more of it.
Also, much of the problem with spam has to do with the naive e-mail protocols written in an age when everyone played nice. Over the past decade it has been said again and again that if only those things were fixed, much of the solution would be found. In part a universally-approved alternate protocol has not surfaced. You will always lose something when moving away from simplicity (added costs, greater difficulty in having your own mail server, etc.). However, in the end people have just been too unenthusiastic and lazy to replace their email infrastructure. One thinks that the geeks administering mail servers don’t get even a fraction of the spam that the people using them do.
P.S. I believe the CAN-SPAM act has made most forms of spamming which are still practiced illegal. However, resources are not being devoted to its enforcement.
Again, people are just too unenthusiastic and lazy regarding this issue. It is hard to say why exactly.
i hadn’t finished my thought…
However, if, for example, an ISP is able to detect spam before it downloads the message to its servers (saving it bandwidth)… suddenly the cost to the spammer drops as well and they’ll just be able to send more of it. Being effective against spam often means that the ISPs have to swallow the same poison they feed to the spammers. Call it chemotherapy if you will. Again, they haven’t been too willing.
One problem is we want email easy to use, which is in conflict to fighting spam. I know some people set up a ‘song and a dance’ where the sender must confirm their identity by clicking on a link then typing in a bunch of letters and/or numbers to make sure the person is real. Problem is, as I’m sure many of you have done, as the sender of such a email, I refuse to do such a puzzle, if the receipiant is lucky enough I will call that person and tell them that I sent them a email but it appears to be deflected into their spam folder, and to check that if they want my email.
spam is a good way to teach humility to hi-tech gurus.
spam disproves the claims of “artificial intelligence” . Any child can identify spam by glancing at the subject line, but the most sophisticated computers can only guess.
Spam only demonstrates that we have still some work to do on AI; it doesn’t demonstrate that AI is impossible.
also, high tech gurus are fully aware of the shortcomings of current ai. anyone making “claims” regarding artificial intelligence is either trying to sell something or is a bit too excited about their research project.
I used to be pissed at all the spam I get but I got over it.
Just simply delete the frigging stuff without opening it of course then enjoy the rest of the day.
What is getting on my tit these days are the number of returned as undeliverable e-mails which I haven’t even sent!!
Again I just delete
Are nerds not our salavation? Where are the basements and backrooms, ill-lit and populated by the wrongly nourished from which I hope to hear “Eureka!”
Can we in fact look forward to spam killing software/hardware sometime soon. I can’t see how the money-making possibilities have been overlooked?
Much more important things? Perhaps. But if they would be looking for a quick win this would be it. It would basically amount to allowing the international spampolice to do all the work, and report the name of the guilty parties to the local officials. Spammers don’t pay taxes; they don’t have friends in high places; they can’t lobby for themselves; they annoy everyone and the guys who make them go away can make themselves very popular.
Just a little prosecuting, or even an convincing threat of prosecuting, would go a long way. Most shady businesses selling V1A9ra don’t mind annoying everyone, but, when they run the risk of arrest and confiscating, the stakes shift considerably.
Like I said, CloudMark.com
It’s very effective. It is supposed to cost $40/yr, but after the trial expires it still works.
It’s not spam killing we need, but spammer killing. One or two extremely public crucifixions would ease the problem tremendously. Now if we can just get Eastern Europe and Nigeria to go along…