If Irritation Had a Face... > interesting...

interesting...

said by BiG_Lou:

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Well I think we can all agree that spam is annoying, but I don't know about illegal...Think of all the junk mail (REAL mail, mind you) that we get. Do we go after these companies for sending us junk mail?

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reply to BiG_Lou
There really is a difference between spam email and junk snail mail. The snail mail costs the sender money. Snail mail is also usable because of these. The amount of junk mail makes it easier to deal with and does not seem to be growing much, because it costs money. Spam email costs the person receiving the email money. The spammer must pay for a little equipment and an internet connection but the receiver is paying money to there provider to prevent spam. This prevention is required to keep email usable.

The government getting involved will hopefully make it more regulated and have limititations on what they can do. My Grandma opening her email and being blasted with a large penis in her email should not be legal. Massive amounts of email that impact mail servers should not be legal. And opt-in opt-out should be valid. The people making money advertising can be okay if it was more reasonable and cleaner (cleaner I mean ligit sales, no false advertising).

The US laws are not valid everywhere. Spammers moving to Sweden is something we do not want. These guys are making really good money and do not plan to give that up easily.

A combination of technology and regulation will make spam email manageable like regular snail junk mail is now.

reply to BiG_Lou
Actually Spam is nothing like junk mail that you get in your mailbox. Home addresses are public as is phone numbers. However email addresses are not public. You have to give out your email address or a company that has your email address sells it to spam companies. It seems to me that it should be a violation of privacy for a company to sell your email address to someone. Thats probably one way to kill spam is to find out whose selling the email addresses and fine them. I never gave out my email address to receive any type of mailing lits and I'm getting tons of emails about penial enlargers, viagra and for porn sites. What if this email address is someone who is not 18 years old? Thats my 2 cents!
[text was edited by author 2003-05-22 21:47:51]

reply to Sedated3
Good reply Sed.

Internet spam is damaging because we, as the unsolicited receiving companies, have to increase bandwidth and server storage just to filter and delete the crap. And that comes out of our pockets, not the spammer.

puritan

reply to mikeyman
I question the under 18 year old problem too. Our boy is 6 years old and got email from Grandma, mom, etc etc. The box became un-usable when we signed up for LeapFrog. He began getting about 10 porn messages a day. Of course he is no longer allowed to look at email but he should be able to get those message from family and friends.

reply to mikeyman
Why all this sophistication ?

why not take care of the nuisance the old fashion way ? (a good beating)

reply to mikeyman
I'm not sure about yours, but my home address and phone number are private. They are not listed to prevent people from just picking the number from a Haines Criss-Cross list and calling or mailing me crap.

puritan

reply to keyboard5684

said by keyboard5684:

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The government getting involved will hopefully make it more regulated and have limititations on what they can do... ...And opt-in opt-out should be valid. The people making money advertising can be okay if it was more reasonable and cleaner (cleaner I mean ligit sales, no false advertising).

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said by keyboard5684:

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The US laws are not valid everywhere. Spammers moving to Sweden is something we do not want. These guys are making really good money and do not plan to give that up easily.

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reply to keyboard5684
Isn't LeapFrog a learning tool for kids? Sounds like they sold his email address.

On the spam issues here.
There is a simple way to lets say control it.
Make all Spammers send mail from a domain called
@spam.com
I have suggested this for porn as well
xxx.com

For companies all they would have to do is load the domain spam.com in their filter list and boom no more spam.

As for the everyday user he or she can do the same.
for the spammer he still gets to send out his 180 million emails and still gets a return from those that want to see the junk.

And for those that say well he will just send it via any domain then charge him grand for each one he send up to say 100 and then scale the cost up. Send over 100 then it cost you 10 grand for those 101 emails you sent etc.
This is not a hard thing to do and should be done ASAP.

Now this gets me to another point we all have to look at.
There are tech firms out there that have ALSO made a killing by writing software to combat spam. The above would virtually shut those firms down unless they have other software to sell. So there also a ecom impact on the job front as well. Job loss would come into play since we "tech industry" wouldn't need 3 or 4 or 10 full time mail admins but just say 1 or 2. We wouldn't need larger net pipes to handle the traffic because there won't be any. So then your looking at effecting the already clues telecom sector.

Just saying lets get rid of spam and down with spammers etc has far more reaching effect than most think on both fronts.

Now don't get me wrong I don't care for spam but it certainly isn't costing me time or money on the home front and with my business its just as easy to delete spam as it is any other email. These days at work you can tell pretty much what is work related and whets spam.

Share you thoughts
ym
Spell check not included.

reply to BiG_Lou

said by BiG_Lou:

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Well I think we can all agree that spam is annoying, but I don't know about illegal...Think of all the junk mail (REAL mail, mind you) that we get. Do we go after these companies for sending us junk mail? E-mail is computer based mail. I personally don't think it should have any different regulations from real-life mail.

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reply to puritan
Your home phone may be private but your address is certainly for sale. It may not be connected to your name but the USPS sells comprehensive lists of all addresses on a particular carrier route to snail mailers who want to hit every business or residence in a ZIP code. (Think of that big wad of grocery ads you get every week). People can opt out of some of these lists but it's bloody difficult as bulk mail is an important revenue stream for the USPS.

reply to puritan

said by puritan:

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Good reply Sed.

Internet spam is damaging because we, as the unsolicited receiving companies, have to increase bandwidth and server storage just to filter and delete the crap. And that comes out of our pockets, not the spammer.

puritan

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reply to puritan
Remember..
It takes dozens of facial muscles to frown..
but only 4 in your arm to b*tch slap the source of your irritation

reply to AntiSpammer696969

said by AntiSpammer696969:

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Why all this sophistication ?

why not take care of the nuisance the old fashion way ? (a good beating)

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