Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Sil Greene <Sil_greene AT unc.edu>]

.:The best way to eliminate spam is to make it not profitable.  

Agreed.

.:The two
.:routes to that end are (1)consumer education and (2)technology.  I could
.:write a whole book on why consumer education won't work, so the best route
.:to recovery is via technological defeat.

I'm not sure about your comment to (1).  Your comment seems(!) to assume 
that consumer education equals-equals teaching people to ignore it.  
And that was my default assumption as well.  But a post on Slashdot today 
enlightened me to another option, which is just as easily a form of 
consumer education, as it is more a shift in attitude of the spam 
recipient.  And it'll be a whole lot more successful, as you don't have to 
convince everyone to ignore spam; you just have to convince a small 
percentage to act this way.

Instead of ignoring spam, reply to it -- in droves.  Spam is prevalent 
because it works, and spam works because you can send several 
thousand/million/whatever emails for nothing, and the small 
percentage of recipients who reply provide you with an insanely high 
profit margin.  But if all of us reply to every spam message we get (say, 
via a button-activated macro/script, see below), then we immediately cut 
into the profit margin: the spammers, or their clients, have to start 
weeding through bogus replies to get to the ones that will make them 
money.

So, a use case:  I'm sitting on my little ibiblio account, reading 
Internetworkers, when a spam message comes in  (Subj: Hi, 
Tola--ffoooo--!).  I recognize it for spam, as I don't recognize the 
sender name or address, and the subject line is similar to other spam 
messages I receive.  I select the message and click my special 
"Spam-the-Spammer" button, activating a macro within my email reader.  I'm 
given an option or three, and select the defaults, and the spam is deleted 
while a bogus response is sent.

This macro or script:
  -- generates a random email address (I like all my faked emails to come 
      from "whitehose.gove", for example, but I don't much care what the 
      account is called)
  -- allows me to select from generic replies or write a new one ("Yes, 
      Larry, I'd love to help you smuggle your funds to the US economy, 
      send me more info!"  .. versus "Hey, Toli, I'd 
      love a copy of that Banned C D")
  -- sends the response
  -- (optionally) finds a way of identifying the spam so the process is 
      more automated next time
  -- finally, deletes the email from my inbox


I think that the number of people who reply to spam, making it profitable, 
is very small.  It won't take many people sending bogus requests to 
surpass this number, and the amount of time the spammers must spend on 
each response to actually make money will quickly rise.  (Even if they get 
paid by the response by another company buying their services: after a 
month or two of increasing bogus responses, that other company will start 
renegotiating fees or will seek other providers, and the spam agency will 
find its profits shrinking.)

What do y'all think?
--Sil


-- 
"If you put your supper dish to your ears you can hear the sounds
 of a restaurant."  --Snoopy    (Charles Schultz 02-12-2000 RIP)
Sil_Greene AT unc.edu