Journal damn_registrars's Journal: Reiterating The Truth About Spam 1
Yesterday featured a front-page article on Facebook being awarded $711 million in an anti-spam case. Not surprisingly, the article wasn't up long before people were calling for him to be murdered.
I replied to that by pointing out that murdering spammers is not only reprehensible and expensive, it is ineffective as well. It is very easy for spammers to pack up their bags and go to a country with spam laws even more lax than our own (yes such places do exist).
However, it needs to be re-stated that legal and extra-legal actions will never solve the problem. For every spammer in business today there are many more ready to take their place should they falter. However, even more so spam is an economic problem.
Spammers don't send out spam to piss you off - no matter how much you might feel otherwise. They send out spam for one reason and one reason only - spam is highly profitable. Hence the only way to solve this economic problem is with an economic solution. You need to remove the profitability from spam, and then spammers will stop sending it. Any other actions are just feel-good solutions that best resemble tilting and windmills.
I replied to that by pointing out that murdering spammers is not only reprehensible and expensive, it is ineffective as well. It is very easy for spammers to pack up their bags and go to a country with spam laws even more lax than our own (yes such places do exist).
However, it needs to be re-stated that legal and extra-legal actions will never solve the problem. For every spammer in business today there are many more ready to take their place should they falter. However, even more so spam is an economic problem.
Spammers don't send out spam to piss you off - no matter how much you might feel otherwise. They send out spam for one reason and one reason only - spam is highly profitable. Hence the only way to solve this economic problem is with an economic solution. You need to remove the profitability from spam, and then spammers will stop sending it. Any other actions are just feel-good solutions that best resemble tilting and windmills.
doesn't most spam... (Score:1)
..come from compromised windows machines being used as email relays and so on? A technical solution there would certainly help. Another is paid for email addresses, like you have to pay for a domain now. If it cost ten bucks a year to have an email address, people would be a bit more careful with their machines security, and that would get back to the manufacturers and software providers to make security job 1, not job 938. The way you can just now poof create an unlimited number of bogus use once and throw