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  • From: Beckett <thomas AT tbeckett.com>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Spam retaliation or not
  • Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 16:01:23 -0400

Quite a refreshing and interesting post, Joey.
Joey Carr wrote:

I've always been tempted to go a little over-board in retaliation for
spam. Unfortunately Jesus was right, retaliation gets you nowhere, best
to turn the other cheek. If more spammers got email bombed they would
just find more creative ways to evade getting mail bombed.

. . . .
So, I think what needs to be done is to find that act, like folding
someone else's laundry, that so clearly demonstrates that spam is wrong
that only a hand full of deranged or highly confused people can ignore it. I typically go in for the retaliation bit, so I'm fresh out of ideas. Anyone?

I generally subscribe to principles of nonviolence in life. With regard to spam, I am trying to take the Aikido approach: harmonize and deflect the assailant's energy. Harmonize by training a Bayesian-based spam filter to recognize spam and, based on its accumulated experience and continued training, deflects the spam into my Trash folder. The greater good would be advanced if everyone followed this approach, because spam would go unanswered, and therefore bring no benefit to the spammer. With no benefit, no return on the time and effort (however slight) expended by the spammer, the spam would cease.
Joey Carr also wrote:

Personally I'm not quite ready to set myself on fire in the street. Anyone have any ideas that might be more, uhm, practical than that?

Yeah, that's an even more useless kind of flame war, isn't it?
TaB




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